The Abrupt Physics of Dying Read Free Page A

Clay.
    It took the better part of half an hour to navigate the rock maze. He was much bigger than the Yemenis, and by the time he emerged down-wadi his clothes were torn and he was bleeding from cuts to his shoulders, forearms and knees. It was like arriving late and underdressed in paradise.
    The softer layers of rock at the base of the cliffs had been cut away, leaving a series of broad overhangs. Beneath, gnarled acacias, ancient ironwood and camelthorn reached their branches out towards thelight in every shade of green. The sound of running water echoed from the canyon walls. The air swirled with the smells of charcoal, fresh dung, cardamom, chlorophyll. A thin column of wood smoke spun up towards the overhang and dispersed in the cool current of air that flowed towards the lowlands.
    Clay looked up at the narrow rail of blue high above. The opening in the plateau was a few metres across at most. No wonder the satellite images had not revealed vegetation.
    ‘It is a good place, no?’
    Clay snapped his head down in the direction of the voice. A small man dressed in a tan
thaub
and clean black-and-white
keffiyeh
stood before them. The left side of his face was over-sized and misshapen, almost pre-human, with a dark, heavily lidded eye buried in a deep well of bone, black as a moonless night in the Empty Quarter. He was unarmed. The two gunmen had disappeared.
    Abdulkader bowed and greeted the man in Arabic, touching the tips of his fingers to his forehead and chest. The man responded in the same way.
    ‘Come,’ said the man. He led them through the trees and up a rock ledge into a small open cave cut into the side of the canyon wall. The oasis spread still and green beneath them. He crouched beside a hearth of stone and bid them sit. ‘You are with the oil company?’ he said in English.
    Clay nodded. ‘My name is Clay Straker.’
    ‘Clay,’ said the man. ‘This is an unusual name. It is not from your Bible.’
    ‘It’s short for Claymore.’
    The man narrowed his good eye. The other floated there, unresponsive. ‘You are named for a weapon. A sword.’
    When he was young, he’d liked his name, liked its meaning. Now he hated it.
    ‘Not my choice.’
    ‘It is an honourable name.’
    Clay said nothing.
    The man shifted back on his heels, brought his knees up close to his chest, narrowed his good eye. ‘Do you know why you are here, Mister Claymore?’
    Clay looked over at Abdulkader and back at the man. ‘Not for a
brai
and a beer, I’m guessing.’
    A hint of a smile twitched in the Arab’s mouth, disappeared. ‘No.’
    ‘We have done you no harm, nor you us,’ said Clay. Not yet. ‘Please. Let us go. This can still be retrieved.’
    ‘Retrieved, Mister Claymore?’
    ‘Sent in another direction.’
    The right side of the man’s face twisted into a smile. He picked up a stick and poked the embers. Without looking up he began to speak. His voice was soft, like the sound of the water bubbling from the spring below, his Arabic an ancient chanting melody. After some minutes he fell silent and sat staring into the coals.
    Clay had followed as best he could, gathering an occasional word, the fragment of a phrase. The language dripped violence; the mutant face was serene. He looked to Abdulkader.
    ‘This man is from an old and important Hadrami family,’ said Abdulkader. ‘Three years ago he went to Sana’a with his father to ask the President for a share of the oil that was discovered here. Promises were made, he says. We have all heard these stories. Instead, President Saleh sent his secret police, the PSO. They killed his father. Now they want him.’
    Abdulkader looked at the man a moment, paused, then turned to face Clay. ‘He is called
Al Shams
. The Sun.’
    Clay felt a cold spine of ice shiver through him, the coldest desert night. He knew that name. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he whispered under his breath. Clay stared into the deep well of the man’s dead eye. And in that darkness he could see it