Olives Page 14

  I wondered if I’d overplayed it. I looked at Lynch to gauge his reaction but he wasn’t looking at me. He was signalling a waitress for a refill. She smiled at him and he winked lewdly.

  ‘What if you can’t deliver, Paul?’

  ‘I can deliver. I know where it is and how it’s secured,’ I lied with a facility that surprised me.

  He turned to face me, still leering. ‘And what if I can’t change the way your case is going? Had you perhaps thought of that? What if I’m not able to wander around telling Jordanian judges what to do?’

  ‘You said it yourself, that Khasawneh was your man. You can fix it. Because you bloody broke it in the first place.’

  His drink arrived and he lifted the glass, looking at me over the foamy head of the lager for a second before drinking.

  ‘Okay, Paul. I’ll have a word. But you deliver on the Jerusalem document in full or I’ll hang you out to dry. In a friendly way, you understand.’

  ‘And call off your thugs. No more break-ins.’

  He was stilled in an instant, watching, wary. ‘What thugs?’

  ‘The two bully boys in balaclavas who broke in upstairs and beat the living shit out of my neighbour.’

  He shook his head. ‘Sorry, son, not mine. Not house style. We don’t do heavy-handed stuff like that unless we’re occupying military. I can’t help you there. Sounds like local talent.’

  I stood, tossing a note on the table to cover the beers, and left, my hands damp with sweat and my heart pumping in my chest so loudly the whole world could surely hear it.

  I waited in the courthouse, my head in my hands, listening to the undisciplined noise of the place, low voices, shuffling feet and doors banging. A mobile went off somewhere in the public gallery and its owner left the room with it to his ear.

  Tariq Al Bashir and the prosecution’s counsel, the fussy little man I had shouted at the previous morning, had been called to the judge’s chambers, the court session suspended pending the result of whatever they were discussing. All I could do was wait. Ibrahim had gone outside for a smoke and had just returned, reeking of aftershave, hair lotion and cigarettes, when Al Bashir came back. He was elated.

  ‘Okay, here’s the deal, Paul. Khasawneh has offered a plea bargain. If you plead guilty to an attempted assault charge, he’ll throw out the drugs one. He won’t press for the full penalty and will accept extenuating circumstances.’

  ‘But that makes me guilty. I’m not guilty.’

  Ibrahim’s smoker’s rumble cut in. ‘Paul, this has not gone as well as I had expected. Someone else is pulling the string here and I cannot do much about it. I think you are best to accept what they have offered.’

  ‘What’s the implication, Tariq? What’s the sentence?’

  ‘The drugs charge carried a ten-year term. An assault charge against an officer would have meant at least two years. Attempted assault would be a maximum of three months, extenuating circumstances would maybe not even be a custodial sentence. We’ll have to see when this gets to sentencing. But he was signalling pretty strongly back there that he just wants this out of his courthouse quickly.’

  ‘So what happened to the hanging judge?’

  Tariq shrugged, rubbing his chin. ‘I don’t know. There’s something about this case he doesn’t like and he just wants rid of us.’ He laughed grimly. ‘And we want rid of us too, no?’

  ‘But what about the Ministry? The papers will carry the sentence, won’t they?’

  Ibrahim shook his head. ‘I can deal with it, trust me. Accept the deal and this will finally all be over.’

  I felt stupid, naive and trapped. I cast around me for some sort of inspiration, something to help me. I found Lynch, sitting in the public gallery. He nodded, the briefest dip of his head. Every man has his price and I had just found mine.

  ‘Okay. Let’s do it.’

  Al Bashir disappeared into the door at the back of the courthouse again. After a full ten minutes spent watching the motes of dust in the sunbeams penetrating the gloom of the courthouse from its high windows, I watched him re-emerge, followed by the three judges. Al Bashir joined us as the judges took their places, the courtroom sitting on Khasawneh’s signal. He started to talk to the room in general, his voice rising.

  Ibrahim’s smoker’s breath was on me as he whispered. ‘He says this case should never have come here. You should never have been arrested originally.’

  He paused as the judge went on, his voice ringing out, his staccato Arabic sounding more like a Friday mosque than a judge summing up.

  ‘He says the police work on this case was sloppy and he has, is it censored? Censored the public prosecutor?’

  ‘Censured.’

  ‘Yes, like this. Censured. He says valuable court time has been wasted.’

  Dominating the silent court, Khasawneh turned his attention to me and I was caught in his bushy-browed, furious stare. I caught ‘Inglez’ but little else as the judge gestured at me, his hand chopping the wooden surface in front of him.

  Ibrahim’s throaty rasp again. ‘He says you were foolish and had been drinking. He does not like to think foreigners can behave just as they like in Jordan. There is a law here and it has to be upheld. Even if you are English khawaja. He is being sarcastic here when he says this.’

  Khasawneh’s voice rose in pitch, poised and dropped as his hand scythed the air.

  ‘He says you must face the consequence of your actions under the law. You can not behave in a foreign country as if you own it. He says these days have gone for you.’

  I whispered back to Ibrahim through the side of my mouth. ‘These days have gone for me?’

  ‘For the English, Paul. He means the English.’

  There I sat, tried by a judge for being English while the British government pulled his strings. Ibrahim broke in on my impotent introspection. ‘He says the court will sit next week to decide sentencing.’

  I turned, alarmed. ‘But the plea bargain.’

  Al Bashir shushed me, his hand out, palm down as we stood for the judges to leave the noisy courthouse.

  ‘Don’t worry, Paul. It’s going to be okay.’

  I’d heard it before. And was fast learning it was Arabic for ‘You’re fucked.’

  FIFTEEN

  It was raining Thursday morning as I left the house, negotiating my way carefully down the slippery steps to my car. The sky was a uniform dull grey.

  I stopped in horror. The windscreen was smashed. The driver’s side front wing had been crushed against the tyre, which was flat. I couldn’t tell whether it had been done by another car or a tyre lever. The interior was soaked. A battered yellow taxi came along the street and I flagged him down.

  At the Ministry, Aisha came down for coffee and I told her about the car.

  ‘Shit. I was hoping you’d drive tomorrow. My car’s in the shop. Let me call my cousin.’

  She laid the sheaf of papers she was carrying down, pulled her mobile from her pocket and made the call. I made coffee for us both and, by the time I came back, she was mid-way through an impassioned burst of Arabic. She winked at me, listening to the reaction on the other end of the line before she returned fire, waving her free hand in the air as she described what I could only imagine would be the globally disastrous consequences of not having a replacement car from Hassan’s car hire company.

  My eye fell on Aisha’s papers. The thick document on the top of the pile was titled in English: ‘Jordan Water Privatisation. Draft Recommendations of the Evaluation Committee.’

  She finished the call and sat at the side of my desk, sipping her coffee and pulling a face at the taste. ‘Fixed. He’ll have a replacement car over at your place tonight. It’s older, but it’s a Mercedes. And he’ll do the same price. They’ll take the damaged car away, too. It’s fine, it’s properly insured so there are no worries about that. He’ll deal with the police.’

  ‘Cool. Thanks, Aish. You’re a wonder,’ I said, touching her hand, then holding it in mine. She smiled down
at me.

  ‘Ibrahim told me it went well yesterday.’

  ‘As well as could be expected. I have to go back for sentencing next week but Tariq thinks it’s likely to be a fine. I’m not happy accepting a guilty plea, but Ibrahim and Tariq both insist it’s the best course. We’ll see. At least they sorted out the drugs charge. I can’t work out where that whole lie came from.’

  She frowned. ‘What about the press? Won’t they report the judgement?’

  I smiled. ‘Ibrahim says he’s fixed it. The court reporter for Petra is a lifelong buddy of his. I can only assume it means Ibrahim’s spent a lifetime in court.’

  Aisha’s soft, throaty laugh was a provocation in itself, her soft, full lips parting like an invitation to heaven. She growled at me.

  ‘Down, ya Brit.’

  I changed the subject, pointing at the pile of papers she had been carrying. ‘So they’ve evaluated the bids? It’s a done deal?’

  She looked down at the documents. ‘Nearly. It just needs to be signed off by the Minister, but he’s travelling right now. And then they go to the financial bids. That’s where this whole process will be won or lost.’

  ‘Travelling? When’s he back? He asked to take a look at the article I’ve been doing about the privatisation and the whole water issue.’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s out this week, though. Why don’t you show the article to Abdullah Zahlan? He’ll be able to sign it off.’

  I shook my head. ‘It’s more a courtesy. Never mind, perhaps next week. I’ve got time. Dinner at mine tonight?’

  Aisha played with the silver coins dangling from her Bedouin necklace. ‘Can’t,’ she whispered. ‘I have salsa class and then I have to pack and get stuff ready to take over to Mariam. Will you come to ours in the morning so I can load up the car?’

  I hadn’t thought we were going to be acting as a private aid convoy, then felt unworthy as I remembered how the family sent little luxuries over whenever they could. Luxuries I had come to think of as everyday things – candles, toothpaste, fine soap, English tea and liquorice allsorts, the latter a particular weakness of Mariam’s, apparently.

  ‘How much stuff are we taking over?’

  ‘A couple of bags. We won’t take too much in case it doesn’t get through. The Israelis sometimes just confiscate the lot.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll come to yours. Nine? Can I bring anything for them?’

  ‘Nine’s fine. And yes, it’d be a nice idea to bring Hamad some sweets, maybe. Zalatimo? He’s crazy about them.’

  Amman’s famous Zalatimo Brothers, a shop in the bustling Shmeisani district packed with huge trays of fine, butter-soaked filo pastry parcels filled with nuts and honey, tubes of fried vermicelli packed with pistachios, little rich cakes of cracked wheat and nuts and date-filled crumbly maamoul pastries, all ready to scoop up and be tightly arrayed into their distinctive dark red and gold tins.

  ‘Done. I’ll pick some up later on the way home.’

  Aisha slid off the desk, her dark denims tucked into knee-length leather boots. She glanced around to make sure nobody was looking our way, then stooped and kissed me.

  She walked away and I watched. She turned as she rounded the desk at the end of the row, caught me looking at her bum and stopped for a fleeting moment, hand on hip and wearing a mock-scandalised expression. I laughed, but after she had left I sat brooding. The Jerusalem Consortium water bid would be my last betrayal, my parting gift to Gerald Lynch and his spooky pals at the British Embassy. I’d stay in Jordan somehow, for Aisha, but not by sacrificing her and her family to Lynch.

  I looked at my screen, seeing nothing but a blur of text and images as I mulled over the water bids and my new career as a stealer of things and professional liar. I was amazed the sister of one of the bidders could wander around with the results of the technical evaluation. And ashamed that my first thought on seeing the document was how I could steal it.

  People were starting to leave for the day and I was still turning things over in my mind and gazing at an empty screen. I waited a good fifteen minutes after the last cheery, bustling figure had shouted a goodbye across to me before I went up to the Minister’s office. Harb’s secretary worked late when he was in town, but invariably skipped for home and quality time with her two children when he was travelling.

  Sure enough, the office suite was open with nobody there. The bid evaluation document was lying on the secretary’s desk and I sauntered over to it, treading softly, my laptop bag bumping my thigh and my heart hammering painfully in my chest. Silence, a clock, my blood rushing in my ears. I heard a creak as I picked up the document. Abdullah Zahlan’s puzzled voice came from the doorway behind me.

  ‘Paul. Hi. What are you up to?’

  Oh fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.

  I stood still, the bid evaluation held in place against my chest by my elbow. Thank God I faced away from him: my shock must have been written across my features like a billboard. Worse, if I turned, he’d see a sheaf of papers in my hand held together with a binding bar and clearly, oh so clearly, marked ‘Confidential’ across its top.

  I heard Aisha’s voice in greeting. ‘Hey, Abdullah.’

  I caught his movement away from me in the corner of my eye and, quick as a flash, unzipped the side pocket of my bag, slipped the bid evaluation into it and pulled out the copy of the water article I had printed out earlier. I was facing Zahlan, gesturing with the printout by the time he’d turned back to me.

  I walked towards him, smiling and trying to sound airy, ‘I was just dropping this piece for the Minister to review when he comes back. I didn’t think his secretary would have left by now. Perhaps you’d care to take a look at it for me?’

  He was dressed as ad agency man again today, all black and a polo neck, carrying his heavy jacket in his arm. He took the document from me, his face still carrying an echo of puzzlement. ‘Certainly, Paul. Can I come back to you Sunday? I’m just on my way out now.’

  I smiled. ‘No problem, I’d value your insight.’ I kept moving and was zipping up my bag as I passed him. ‘Have a good weekend.’

  ‘Hang on a second,’ he said.

  I pulled up. My heart stopped beating.

  Zahlan headed for his office. ‘I’ll come out with you.’

  He put my article on his desk, closed his office door and slipped on his jacket before joining me in the corridor. I was sweating under my coat, a nasty hot and cold feeling.

  The bid evaluation document in my bag seemed to weigh me down. Aisha took a taxi home and I took another, relieved at not having to talk to her just then.

  We crossed over at the Sheikh Hussein Crossing, a relatively short drive north from Amman through the green-flecked beige expanse of rocky hillsides. Daoud’s man Selim came with us to smooth the process of crossing the border. The queue at the Jordanian checkpoint snaked back from the barbed wire fences and the scattering of low buildings and concrete barriers marking the crossing point. The Jordanian soldiers were thorough and suspicious as they searched the car and checked our documents, Daoud’s man Selim fussing and fixing all the way, a greasy little character who simpered and cowered, yet who seemed to be able to smooth our way through, procuring letters of this and documents of that. We were finally waved through. I found the whole process unnerving, bracing myself for the infamous Israeli checkpoint. I was already jittery passing though the Jordanian side, fear making me gabble nervously and point out silly things around us. I looked across at Aisha, but she seemed lost in her own thoughts. I noticed she was gripping the door handle.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  Her smile was taut as she shook her head. ‘I never like this very much. Sorry. I usually go through the Allenby crossing and it’s never good. This one I don’t know and it makes me nervous. Selim is supposed to have fixed the paperwork. I hope he’s done it well.’

  Her face darkened as the Israeli soldiers came up to the car and asked us to get out. They were pleasant enough, which surprised me given the many t
ales I’d heard about their aggressiveness and the routine dehumanisation that took place at the border. They took our passports and the car permit Aisha gave them before starting their search of the car, a methodical and unhurried process that involved quite a lot of electronic hardware. My mouth was dry as I willed myself to look relaxed but I knew there were dark patches of sweat under my armpits. A dog was brought up to the car and led around it. It stopped a couple of times, once by the rear wheel and, in my state of heightened perception and fear, I saw it barking and soldiers rushing over to us. But it just sniffed the wheel and whined, then moved on.

  ‘Cat piss,’ said one of the two soldiers standing by me, in English, and the other laughed.

  I wondered if he had spoken English for my benefit. I felt confused, my expectations of sneering brutality confounded by their dismissive efficiency.

  We were taken into a building where we were separated, each asked a set of routine questions by indifferent, pretty women in uniforms. Where are you coming from? Why are you visiting Israel? I was asked why I decided to live in Jordan, what other Arab countries I had been to and did I have any contacts or family in the West Bank, a barrage of questions, each answer noted down before we were sat at opposite ends of the room and the women swapped over and ran through their questions again. We were finally allowed out to the car, which had been thoroughly searched while we were being questioned, our bags on the tarmac and the supplies Aisha had brought for Mariam neatly laid out, each parcel sliced open and reduced to its components in a careful, considered act of searching as destructive as any wanton act of brutal vandalism, perhaps more so for its cold efficiency. We gathered our things up and repacked the car, trying to stem the tide of tea from the sliced-open packets and repack the slippery, loose soap bars. One of the two big red, yellow and blue tins of tuna we had been carrying had been opened and the pungent oil slopped out into the car boot, soaking into the faded grey carpet.