Ninety-nine

Thirty minutes passed before the pickup reached the first security gate.

Set in the middle of a smooth rectangular plain, the entrance was overlooked by a pair of symmetrical watchtowers, armed guards manning each of them behind bulletproof glass.

After a considerable pause, the vehicle was waved through, and began to run the gauntlet between barricades, each of them electrified and fortified with great spirals of concertina razor wire.

A full twenty minutes was spent crossing the plateau, such was its size. Beneath the blankets, Blaine and Ghita clung together, as the vehicle jolted from side to side.

Then Murad braked hard.

He got out of the vehicle and called to the crew manning the second security gate.

‘What’s going on?’ Blaine whispered.

‘I think we’re entering the prison now.’

A siren sounded up on the watchtower. Then a pair of officers climbed down a rusted iron ladder and made a rudimentary inspection. Murad held up his identity badge, and waved a hand at the back. One of the guards peered in, grimaced, and beckoned him back to his seat.

Another set of gates followed, and eventually the outline of the prison materialized against the dim mountain sky.

There were watchtowers galore, security lights, and miles and miles of razor wire in concertina, covering almost every surface.

The pickup rolled dead slow down a ramp, its bald tyres pressing against the diagonal grooves in the concrete. The steel gates clanged open, then closed fast, and a guard’s whistle echoed loud and shrill.

Too fearful to sit upright, Ghita and Blaine waited for Murad’s signal. The beef bones pressed heavily against them, but they lay rigid, not daring to move.

In the distance a siren sounded, three short bursts, the noise lost to the outside world. Murad steered his vehicle down through a subterranean corridor. It was walled in sheets of steel plate, with a concrete ceiling and floor.

At the end he stopped, checked the coast was clear, and only then made his way hastily to the back of the truck. Lifting away the boxes of bones, he was surprised to see the foreigner there as well.

‘I can only take one of you,’ he said.

‘Me,’ Ghita replied.

‘Then put these on.’

He threw down prison overalls.

‘You wait here,’ Ghita whispered to Blaine. ‘I’ll hurry back with my father.’

Murad looked at his watch.

Squinting for a moment, he said:

‘We must wait for the change in shifts. It happens on the hour. Your father is kept in the solitary isolation block. It’s got the highest security. I will take you directly there, and you will have three minutes to get into the block and to leave. Do exactly as I say.’

Ghita slipped on the overalls and touched Blaine’s hand tenderly. The goldsmith’s cousin picked up one of the cartons and motioned for her to follow him.

Down a slope.

Through three doors with push-button locks.

Another slope, this time uphill.

Then a corridor, and an electrified gate.

Once through it, Murad opened a steel armour-plated door using a key that hung from the ring on his belt.

He put the box down.

‘Quickly, come with me,’ he said.

They hurried along yet another corridor, and then another, and through three more steel gates. Once again, Murad looked at his wristwatch.

‘We’re two minutes early,’ he said.

They waited in a doorway, both of them concentrating on the seconds. Ghita caught a flash of childhood memory – the days when her mother was still alive. She was sitting on the edge of a stream in Switzerland with her parents.

A picnic in the mountains. Warm summer air, butterflies, and strawberry flan.

All of a sudden, a shrill whistle sounded.

It was followed by the metallic crunch of gates slamming shut, and the voice of authority bellowing an order.

‘That’s it,’ Murad said. ‘We have to move now!’

He led the way, sprinting down the last corridor, Ghita less than a pace behind. Quickly, he jammed a flat-edged key in the lock of the sheet-steel door, ‘3’ written in chipped white paint at the top.

The cell was suddenly blasted with light.

In the corner, where the wretched walls met the floor, a man was hunched over in terror. His eyes were covered by a trembling hand, his face bruised and unshaven.

Ghita was shaking so much herself she couldn’t speak at first. She felt as though she was about to pass out.

‘Baba?’ she whispered, her voice hoarse with emotion. ‘Is that you?’

The figure seemed paralysed at first. But, very slowly, he lolled forwards quizzically.

‘Baba, it’s me... it’s Ghita!’

They hugged, so tight that they could never be parted, both of them in a flood of tears.

Murad called from behind.

‘Hurry! You must hurry!’

‘We have to go, Baba! There’s no time.’

‘Go? Where?’

‘To safety. I have arranged it. Don’t ask me how.’

A look of total disbelief fell like a death shroud over Omary’s face.

He began to choke.

‘Darling, Baba, I have arranged it all.’

‘But how?’

‘Through taking favours and by paying bribes – it was the only choice to save you.’

Hicham Omary let go of his daughter, his fingers gnarled and stiff.

‘No!’ he spat through gritted teeth. ‘I shall not run like a dog and be hunted, if corruption was the key that freed me!’

‘But, Baba... please!’

Hicham Omary turned his back.

‘Leave me!’ he growled. ‘Leave me now! Go!’

Ghita stretched forwards to touch his shoulder.

‘Please, Baba, please!’

But Omary turned, and pushed his daughter away.

An instant later, the door was slammed shut, and the cell was plunged into darkness once again.

Back at the pickup, Blaine peered out from under the blanket.

‘Where is he?’

Sobbing uncontrollably, Ghita climbed into the back. She thrust her arms around Blaine’s neck.

‘He wouldn’t come,’ she said, still in shock.

‘What? Why not?’

‘Because he’s far too proud to run.’

They hid under the blankets and the car rolled out from the belly of the prison, and ran the gauntlet of security checks once again. Ghita cried all the way, with Blaine unable to calm her.

Once the prison was far behind, they poked their heads out from the blankets.

The sun was lowering, the soft winter light illuminating the crags and the mountain scrub.

‘I think we’re nearly there,’ said Blaine. He pivoted round and scanned the road ahead. ‘Wow, d’you see that?’

‘What?’

‘The smoke up there?’

Ghita sat up.

‘I wonder what it is.’

‘Looks like one hell of a fire.’

The pickup rounded a corner and moved through the plume of dense oily smoke, drawing to a halt fifty feet from it.

‘Oh my God,’ said Blaine.

‘It’s... it’s...’

‘The Silver Ghost.’

‘What could have happened?’

‘Must have been the electrics.’

They got out of the pickup.

As soon as they were on the ground, Murad raced away. He didn’t stop to say a word.

In silence, Blaine led the way up to the wreckage. The side had been strafed with high-calibre machine gun fire.

‘That’s no electrical fire,’ he said.

‘What are we going to do?’

‘Walk, I guess.’

There was the sound of a vehicle in the distance, navigating the mountain passes.

They both turned at once.

‘Let’s flag it down,’ said Ghita.

‘D’you think they’ll stop?’

‘Hope so.’

The car’s engine grew louder, straining as it climbed and took the last bend. Blaine put his hands up and waved. Then Ghita jumped into the road and did the same.

A shot rang out, and another, and a third, fourth and fifth.

Lurching forwards, Blaine shoved Ghita out the way.

They crouched down behind the burning wreckage of the Rolls-Royce. A slate-grey four-by-four changed down as it sped into view. The driver hit the brakes hard. As he did so, the passenger aimed his weapon, a 9 mm Glock.

He fired off two rounds in the direction of the Silver Ghost.

Blaine swivelled round, scouring the crags.

‘What are you looking for?’ Ghita said urgently. ‘Can’t you see, the shots are coming from over there.’

‘There’s another weapon somewhere – much heavier calibre – the one that hit the Ghost.’ He pointed to a blurred figure on a vantage point above the road. ‘Looks like he’s reloading.’

‘Should we surrender?’

Blaine balked at the question.

‘Are you crazy? I’ve seen enough gangster movies to know they’d cut us to pieces.’

‘Then what do we do?’

‘Pray.’

‘For what?’

‘A miracle.’

The machine gunner raised his weapon and took approximate aim. As he did so, the driver of the four-by-four steered his vehicle to the far side of the Rolls-Royce, screeching to a stop.

‘We’re going to die,’ said Ghita in a cold plain voice.

Blaine narrowed his eyes.

‘D’you hear that?’

‘What?’

‘Another vehicle.’

With time elasticated around them, the pair focused on their hearing. The sound was loud and deep, almost like a racing car.

‘Must be their back-up.’

The man with the Glock got out of the car and walked towards them slowly, the Rolls-Royce in between. Blaine picked up a sharp-edged stone and hurled it towards him.

He missed.

The Glock pistol was aimed. But before it could be fired, the machine gun rang out, spraying the ground behind them.

And then, the miracle arrived.

Swinging fast around the last bend came a blur of scarlet.

A 1966 Ferrari Daytona convertible.

Its engine revving as if about to leave pole position, the horn sounded long and hard.

‘Get in!’ screamed a voice – a young voice.

Blaine and Ghita looked at each other.

‘It’s Saed!’ Blaine yelled.

Without thinking how or why, they leapt into the Ferrari, as it spun round and disappeared in a blinding screen of dust.

‘They’re sure to chase us!’ Blaine shouted.

‘Don’t worry,’ Saed replied fast. ‘I know a short cut.’

‘Back to Casablanca?’

The shoeshine boy jerked his head up and down.

‘We’ll be there in no time!’

‘So where did you get your hands on a Ferrari?’ Blaine asked, as the road levelled out.

Saed strained to look meek.

‘Well, you know how it is.’

‘No, I’m not sure that I do... tell me.’

‘More interesting is how you knew we were there, waiting to be cut down,’ said Ghita.

‘Or how your feet reach the pedals,’ said Blaine.

The shoeshine boy smiled, a raw mischievous smile.

‘I tied bricks to my feet!’ he said.