Chaos Theory Read online

  He carried the Arri back towards the marker-buoy line. He tied the handle securely and then gave the line three sharp tugs downward, to indicate that he had found the camera and that the boatman could haul it up. Some inquisitive wrasse came swimming past him, but quickly scattered when he kicked his way up towards the surface.

  Silja leaned over the side and helped to pull him out of the water. ‘Well done. Now you can buy me breakfast. I think full English, with fried bread and black pudding, too.’

  ‘You have to be joking. All I want is a large Bloody Mary – Stolichnaya, with extra Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce.’

  They took a taxi back to the O’Callaghan’s Elliot Hotel on Governor’s Parade, where the whole crew and cast of Dead Reckoning were staying, and went up to the Rooftop Restaurant for breakfast. Through the panoramic windows they could see the Straits of Gibraltar, Southern Spain and Morocco, although the hazy sky made the view appear strangely ghostly.

  ‘You amaze me,’ said Noah, as he watched Silja cutting up a fat British-style sausage.

  ‘I have a very efficient metabolism,’ she said, smiling at him. Without her dark Rayleigh Martin wig, she didn’t look so anaemic. Her own hair was so blonde that it was almost white, and cut into a feathery, elf-like style. She had high cheekbones and blue eyes that were pale like a winter’s sky. But Noah still found her physical strength to be the most attractive thing about her . . . the thought that he probably couldn’t beat her in unarmed combat.

  Richard Bullman came over to their table, wearing a dishevelled green linen suit, John-the-Baptist sandals and yellow socks. He had a pouchy, sallow face like Deputy Dawg. His wiry black hair was uncombed and he looked as if he hadn’t shaved for three days.

  ‘Just thought you’d like to know that Kevin’s had the Arri checked over. The bloody electronics are toast but the footage looks OK, no bloody thanks to you.’

  ‘Will we have to shoot that scene over?’ Noah asked him.

  Richard Bullman wobbled his jowls. ‘No, thank God. I almost hate to say it, but I looked through the rushes last night and they’re bloody terrific. Not exactly what I had in mind, but the way Silja goes hurtling across that bloody deck – human bloody cannonballs aren’t in it.’

  ‘That’s a bloody relief.’

  ‘For you it is.’

  He caught sight of Jean Bottaro, one of the movie’s producers, sitting on the other side of the restaurant, and raised his arm to her. ‘Jean. I must have a word with bloody Jean . . .’

  Once he had gone, Noah lifted the binocular case on to the table. He picked up a butter knife and started to chisel at the catch.

  Silja said, ‘You don’t seriously think there are any binoculars in there?’

  He shook the case hard. ‘No. But there’s something.’

  A waiter stood close by, frowning disapprovingly as Noah scraped black fragments of rust on to the tablecloth. Eventually, he managed to force the tip of the knife in between the catch and the canvas, and pry the lid open. First he took out a red-and-gold tobacco box, spotted with corrosion, and then he shook out a large black medallion, about seven centimetres in diameter and half a centimetre thick, attached to a heavy black chain.

  He picked up the medallion and examined it closely. On one side it was engraved with an arrangement of parallel lines that looked like primitive drawings of arrows. On the other, he could make out a crescent moon shape, an arrangement of raised circles, and the letters P R C H A L.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Silja. She took out her rimless half-glasses and peered at it across the table.

  ‘I don’t have any idea. It looks pretty old though, doesn’t it?’

  ‘What is P R C H A L? Maybe initials for something . . .’

  ‘Who knows? Let’s see what’s inside this box.’

  The box was enamelled, with a picture of a scarlet devil on the lid, smoking a long-stemmed pipe. It was embossed with the words Tabak Cert.

  Noah slowly forced it open. Inside there was a small quantity of coarse black tobacco and six or seven pieces of blotchy-looking newsprint, carefully torn into rectangles.

  ‘Looks like somebody was running low on cigarette papers,’ he commented. He picked up one of the pieces of newsprint and tried to read it. ‘Can’t understand a word. What do you think it is? Hungarian, something like that?’

  Silja took the piece of paper and said, ‘Czech. See here, this word “nemocnice”, that means “hospital”. I tore my Achilles’ tendon once when I was filming in Prague, and they took me to the “nemocnice”.’

  ‘So maybe P R C H A L means something in Czech. Maybe it’s not initials at all. Hey, maybe it’s the Czech for “prickle”. Well, hey, it sounds like it, doesn’t it – “prchal”?’

  Silja looked at him over her half-glasses, unamused. She passed over another piece of newsprint and pointed to the edge of it. ‘Here, look, there’s a date here. 30 June 1943. This is more than sixty-five years old.’

  ‘So somebody lost this case during World War Two. Could have dropped it off a boat, I guess. Or maybe it came from a plane crash. There were all kinds of bits of aircraft wreckage down there, and it was pretty much in line with the end of the landing strip.’

  Silja poured herself another cup of black coffee. ‘Well, I don’t think we’ll ever find out, will we? Whoever used to own this box, he died before he could enjoy his last cigarette.’

  Noah took out two Marlboros, and lit them both. ‘My daddy always used to warn me that smoking kills.’

  Three

  Adeola Davis woke up and stared at the alarm clock beside the bed. 5.57 a.m. Shit. She wouldn’t have time for her morning workout. She would hardly have enough time to take a shower.

  She heaved Rick’s arm off her and sat up. ‘I’m late,’ she said. ‘I have my first meeting at six forty-five.’

  Rick was still sleeping. He mumbled, ‘Don’t . . . you really don’t want to do that, dude . . .’

  Adeola flung back the bedcover and bounced out of bed. ‘You said you’d wake me. You promised you’d wake me. Jesus Christ, it’s your job to wake me.’

  Rick opened one eye and looked up at her, confused. ‘What’s the matter, baby? What’s happening?’

  ‘I need to be sitting across a table from the Ethiopians in forty-seven minutes, that’s what’s happening. I need to look fresh, and perfectly groomed, and I need to have my head together. I need to be utterly composed.’

  She crossed the room, scooping up her blue silk bathrobe as she went, and opened the bathroom door. ‘I do not need to look puffy-eyed and dishevelled and exhausted, nor do I need to smell as if I’ve been having all-night sex with my head of security.’

  Rick propped himself up on one elbow. ‘But you have been having all-night sex with your head of security.’

  Adeola went into the blue-tiled bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror over the washbasin. God almighty, she looked like one of those juju masks they sold in the backstreet markets in Lagos. Her short hair was all frizzy, her eyelids were swollen, and her lips were pouting. She climbed into the glass shower cubicle and turned on the shiny designer faucet.

  ‘Coffee?’ asked Rick, coming into the bathroom naked. He was stocky and muscular, with a black crucifix of hair on his chest. He had a handsome, heart-shaped face with some disturbing femininity in it, like a young Tony Curtis or a Ray Liotta.

  ‘Cranberry juice, that’s all.’

  He opened the door of the shower cubicle and stood watching her as she soaped herself. He had a slight tic in his right eye, the result of a gunshot wound inflicted in Kuwait, so that he looked as if he were winking at her. ‘Are you sure that’s all? Cranberry juice? I mean . . . forty-seven minutes, that’s just about long enough . . .’

  She turned to him. ‘There’s a time for everything, Mr Kavanagh. A time to live and a time to die. A time to be a lover and a time to be a fighter. And a time to get the hell out of the bathroom and put some pants on.’

  ‘You’re a goddess, you know
that? Look at you.’

  Adeola had a long, exotic face with feline eyes and a very strong jawline. This morning she might have thought that she looked like a juju mask, but she looked exactly like her mother, whose extraordinary appearance had made the UN African Affairs Director fall in love with her thirty-three years ago during the course of a single dinner party in Abuja, and marry her within three months. A year later, Adeola had been born. Her name meant ‘loved by all’.

  Her father was white, so Adeola’s skin was paler than her mother’s, but she had her mother’s full breasts, and her hips flared out in just the same way, although her legs were much longer, like her father’s.

  When she was growing up, Adeola had been repeatedly asked if she had considered a career in modelling, or acting, but she was too intense for that, too serious, too political. She wanted to do some good in the world. That was why she had eventually joined DOVE, which was now the most influential privately-financed aid agency in the world.

  ‘Your juice, m’lady,’ said Rick, as she came out of the bathroom, her hair wrapped up in a towel turban. He was already dressed in a white linen shirt and sand-coloured chinos. He had strapped on his shoulder holster but his black SIG-Sauer P225 semi-automatic pistol was lying on the table next to the bowl of papayas and oranges.

  ‘Did you talk to Captain Madoowbe about security?’ Adeola asked him, picking up her juice.

  ‘I did, but he’s more excited by firepower than he is by good intelligence. Personally I don’t give a flying fig how many rocket-propelled grenade launchers he and his goons are toting around. If somebody’s sneaked in and placed a bomb under the conference table, it’s goodnight Vienna.’

  ‘Or goodbye Dubai, in this case,’ said Adeola. She went to the window and looked out. Her suite was on the forty-eighth floor of the Emirates Towers Hotel, with a view of the royal stable buildings and the desert beyond, which was a bright pink colour this morning – almost the same colour as her cranberry juice. She could never look at the desert without having the strangest of feelings. It was like seeing her own death, waiting for her.

  She went through to the bedroom and opened the closet. Most of the clothes that she had brought to Dubai were very plain and sober. Today she took out a pale lemon suit she had bought on her last trip to New York. It was a little too Hilary Clinton for her taste, but the men with whom she had to negotiate in Africa and the Middle East expected women to be modest and respectable. Even talking to a woman on equal terms made them tetchy.

  ‘We’re taking all three SUVs,’ called Rick, as Adeola sat in front of the dressing table, struggling to pin up her hair. ‘You’ll be in the third one, for a change. We’ll drive straight up to the entrance of the Taj Hotel, Jimmy and Miko will get out and make sure that the scenery looks tight before they give you the signal. Then and only then will you disembark.

  ‘If anything looks at all screwy, your vehicle will back up at high speed, execute a one-eighty, and head south-east on Al Rigga Road, foot to the floor.’

  Adeola had the tip of her tongue between her teeth as she fastened an Igbo buckle into her hair.

  ‘You hearing this?’ said Rick.

  ‘I’m hearing it. I’m just having so much trouble with my freaking hair. What did I do last night?’

  ‘You mean you can’t remember?’

  Jimmy, Miko, Charles and Nesta were all waiting for them down in the hotel lobby. They were all discreetly dressed, just like Rick, in white shirts, navy-blue sport coats and chinos, except for Nesta, who was wearing a blue blouse and a knee-length black linen skirt. They could have been mistaken for travel-company staff, rather than bodyguards.

  Charles checked his huge stainless-steel watch. ‘We’re three minutes ahead of schedule,’ he said. ‘Do you want to wait or do you want to go now?’

  ‘We’ll wait,’ said Rick. ‘Safer to stay here than hang around at the Taj. Miko – any radio chatter?’

  ‘Nothing that related to us.’

  ‘OK . . . I haven’t received any cautions from Al Ameen, either. All the same, this is a highly sensitive conference, politically speaking, so I’d like us all to be extra watchful.’

  ‘I went out first thing this morning and checked out the rooftop opposite the Taj,’ said Jimmy. ‘There’s no possible access, and in any case you’d never get a clear shot from there.’

  ‘How about the apartments?’

  ‘All occupied – and again, you’d never get a clear shot. Too many trees, and the SUVs would be blocking your line of fire.’

  ‘OK, happy with that. Any other thoughts, before we roll?’

  ‘You’re confident about Captain Madoowbe’s people?’ asked Nesta.

  ‘No. But then I’m never too happy about African state security, no matter which country I’m in. You can be halfway through a job, and they have a military coup back home, and all of a sudden your smiley chum is your fanatical machete-swinging enemy. There’s a couple of guys on Captain Madoowbe’s team who did some pretty dubious things in Mogadishu, so let’s keep our eyes on them, too.’

  They left the air-conditioned chill of the lobby and stepped out into the hotel portico. Although it was still early, the temperature had already climbed to thirty degrees and the heat hit them like an oven door opening. On the far side of the portico, three shiny black Ford Explorers were parked nose-to-tail by the curb, watched over by the sixth member of Adeola’s security team, Reuben Brock. It was difficult to mistake Reuben for a travel executive. In spite of his dark blue yachting blazer and his well-pressed chinos, and the way that his hands were discreetly clasped over his genitals, he had the bull-headed look of a minotaur, with no neck whatsoever, and a top-heavy torso that had earned him the nickname Rube the Cube.

  He came across to join the rest of the team as they escorted Adeola to the rear Explorer. ‘Everything OK?’ he asked in his gravelly Pittsburgh accent. ‘Are we ready to roll?’

  ‘Ready to roll.’

  As they were opening up the Explorer’s doors, a young Arab in a loose-fitting black coat and baggy pants came hurrying towards them from the street, his sandals slapping on the asphalt. He called out, ‘Assalam alekum! Keyf haleck?’

  Adeola turned. The young man looked innocent enough. He couldn’t have been older than seventeen or eighteen, with a maroon knitted hat and the first dark wisps of an immature moustache. When he saw Adeola, he raised his hand and said, ‘Miss Adeola Davis! Sabah al-khayr! Good morning to you!’

  Rick immediately seized Adeola by the hips and hoisted her into the back of the Explorer. ‘Get down! Flat across the seat!’

  Reuben crossed the portico and intercepted the young Arab before he could get within twenty yards of Adeola’s Explorer.

  ‘Back off, kid. You can’t come over here.’

  ‘Assif, I’m sorry. I recognize Miss Adeola Davis.’

  ‘Sorry, kid. You didn’t recognize nobody.’

  ‘Please – I am a great admirer of Miss Adeola Davis. She is my heroine, working so hard in the Middle East for peace. All I want is autograph.’

  The young Arab reached into his inside pocket. Reuben immediately heaved out his Colt automatic and said, ‘Hold it, kid! Don’t even think about it!’

  But the young Arab folded back his coat to show that he had nothing in his inside pocket except for a spiral-bound notebook. ‘All I want is autograph.’

  ‘Sorry, kid, you made a mistake. Wrong person. Now beat it.’

  Two of the uniformed doormen had come over now, and started shouting at the young man in Arabic, ordering him to go away. One of them kicked at him, although he missed, and almost fell over. Eventually, the young man raised both hands in mock-surrender. ‘OK, OK. Mafi mushkila. I go.’

  He turned around and walked away, with his sandals still slapping.

  Rick opened the Explorer’s door just as Reuben came back. ‘False alarm. Some autograph hunter, that’s all. Let’s get out of here before we run late. Wouldn’t want to keep His Excellency Ato Ketona Aklilu waiting, wo
uld we?’

  They climbed into the three SUVs, and pulled out of the Emirates Towers Hotel with their tyres squealing on the baking-hot asphalt.

  Four

  Captain Madoowbe and his security team were waiting for them outside the Taj Palace Hotel. There were eight of them altogether, all wearing flappy brown suits and mirrored sunglasses, except for Captain Madoowbe himself, who was dressed in an olive-green military uniform, beautifully tailored and pressed, complete with medals and ribbons and insignia.

  ‘The whole of the surrounding environment is totally secure,’ he announced, as Rick and Reuben escorted Adeola up the hotel steps.

  Rick took off his sunglasses and looked around with his eyes narrowed. ‘Pleased to hear it.’

  Captain Madoowbe was short, with a large head and intensely black skin. His eyes were hooded and he had decorative patterns of scars on his cheeks. It may have been his strong accent, but Adeola always thought that he sounded incredibly arrogant. She had never seen any reliable evidence, but it was rumoured that Captain Madoowbe had been involved in the notorious torture and killing of several Oromo people in the Jarso district of Wollaga, several years ago, including a pregnant woman and her unborn child.

  ‘OK,’ said Rick. ‘If we can give the conference room a quick once-over . . .’

  ‘That has already been done to my complete satisfaction,’ said Captain Madoowbe.

  ‘All the same.’

  ‘That has already been done to my complete satisfaction,’ Captain Madoowbe repeated. He made no move to stand aside.

  Rick lowered his head a little. Then he looked back up again and said, ‘You have your foreign minister to protect, Captain, and I’m sure you do that to the best of your ability. But Ms Davis is my responsibility, and I have to insist on vetting the conference room for any security problems that may specifically affect her.’