“So here’s what’s happened, Richard. Sheikh Rasheed goes on ruling. He has important meetings in which he discusses new building projects that are never going to happen, traffic control schemes that are never going to be implemented, education policies that no longer matter and state banquets to which nobody is going to come. Last week he inspected his army. It’s a shame you weren’t here. He stood on a balcony and they marched the same one hundred soldiers round and round the building for three hours, making him think he was in control of thousands. Oh yeah – and they brought out the tank too. There is only one working tank. But he stood there, taking the salute, with the deputy prime minster on one side and all the other ministers around. I was there too. I saw him. And I’ll never forget the idiot grin on his face.”
“Why do the ministers stick with him?” Scarlett asked.
“Because he’ll shoot them if they try to leave. They smile and they bow and they applaud when he says something witty – and they’re all terrified of him. More to the point these people chose to stay behind and now they’ve got nowhere else to go. There are tons of supplies stockpiled in the royal palace. He controls the electricity supply and he’s even got his own desalination plant for water. Provided they play ball and try not to say anything that will get them killed, they’re probably more comfortable in Dubai than they would be anywhere else. So why rock the boat? Maybe some of them have even managed to persuade themselves that the streets are busy and the shops are full. That’s one of the reasons they keep the traffic lights running. It’s all part of the illusion. The point is, nobody steps out of line.”
“What did Larry do?” Richard asked.
“Larry was stupid. He and I had been talking together. Things are OK here. Apart from anything else, there’s still a certain amount of aviation fuel at the airport and we were doing plenty of jobs for Rasheed, running stuff up and down into Egypt. But at the same time, we were getting bored. It’s not much fun being the only sandwich at the picnic when everyone else is a fruitcake. So we agreed we were going to do a runner. We’d heard there’s a community doing OK in the Northern Territory in Australia, near Alice Springs, so we thought we’d fly out and join them. The trouble is, Larry got greedy. He decided to help himself to some of the sheikh’s very considerable treasure. You might wonder who needs diamonds the size of ping-pong balls when the whole world is slipping down the gutter, but maybe Larry was thinking ahead.
“He sneaked into the palace one night while everyone was having dinner and broke into the royal vault – but of course he got himself caught in the act. You can imagine there was quite a song and dance about that. They weren’t angry. They were delighted! You see, it gave them something real to do. They were able to set up a whole series of courts – the Court of First Instance, the Court of Appeal, the Court of Cassation – with defence lawyers and prosecution lawyers and witnesses and all the rest of it. Rasheed took the role of chief judge and he had himself kitted out with a wig and a red coat, even though it must have been a hundred degrees in the courtroom.
“Anyway, this lasted a couple of months and the upshot of it was – surprise, surprise – Larry was found guilty.”
“What are they going to do with him?” Richard asked.
“They haven’t decided yet. They may cut off his head. They may cut off his hands. Or they could just put him in front of a firing squad. It depends on Rasheed’s mood and that can change in the blink of an eye. One thing you can bet on is that they’ll make a big thing of it. Without TV, they’ve had to find other ways to amuse themselves.” Martins lit another cigarette. “Whatever happens, he isn’t going to be flying this Airbus any time soon.”
“Can’t he give you the codes?”
“I haven’t been allowed to see him. And anyway, it isn’t as easy as that. There’s no air traffic control any more. There’s no sat nav. If you want to fly one of these things, you more or less have to do it with maps and a compass. I’m not even sure I could find Alice Springs without him.”
There was a long pause. The cabin was full of cigarette smoke but Martins didn’t seem to notice.
In the end it was Scarlett who broke the silence. “Does Sheikh Rasheed speak English?” she asked.
“They all do. English is the language of international business so they like to speak it all the time.”
“If we were able to persuade him to release your friend, would you fly us to Antarctica?”
The co-pilot shrugged. “You want me to be honest? I can’t answer that. Larry’s the one in charge.”
“But if Larry agreed, you’d go along with it?”
Martins thought for a moment. “I don’t really care where I go or what I do. It seems to me that the whole world has somehow got itself blown to infinity, and what difference does it make if I end up drinking myself unconscious in the outback or freezing my balls off on the ice?” He glanced at the tip of his cigarette. “Or dying of lung cancer here,” he added. “But you’re not going to persuade Sheikh Rasheed to let him go. He’s been found guilty – and that’s the end of it.”
“We might be able to make him change his mind,” Richard muttered. “Can you get us in to see him?”
Once again, Martins shook his head. “Sorry, mate. Right now I’m not Mr Popular at the palace. There’s a faint suspicion that Larry and me were in it together. Pinch the diamonds and jump on the plane. All in all, it’s better if I don’t show my face.”
“Could we go in ourselves? Is there a way we can get to meet him?
“Yeah. Actually, that’s easy.”
“How?”
“The sheikh used to gamble in London and he enjoyed it so much, he made it legal in Dubai. So they still have horse racing once a month, even though it’s always the same horses going round the track and they’re so lame now that it takes them half an hour to finish. And there’s also the casino and the sheikh goes there almost every night.”
“People still have money to gamble?” Scarlett was amazed.
“I know it’s crazy. You’d think money wouldn’t matter any more. You can walk into pretty much every shop and help yourself to a new car, a diamond necklace … whatever. But you try buying a bottle of water! That’s when you need hard cash and the sheikh just loves making his people squirm. People in Dubai are gambling for their lives, quite literally. Last week we actually had one man die playing a fruit machine. He put in his last coin and when the bells didn’t come up, he just fell off his stool and he was dead. Dehydration.
“So, you want the sheikh to notice you, you go in there and win big or lose big and either way it’ll happen. Just remember – if he scowls at you, be scared.”
“And if he smiles at us?”
“Be scared too. You’ll see how it is. The man’s got all the charm of a rattlesnake. But if you can get Larry out of there, I for one will be grateful.” Martins glanced at his watch. “The casino opens in an hour, at seven o’clock. Good luck if you’re going in there. I’m telling you … you’re going to need it.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
The casino was on Baniyas Road: a squat, low-rise construction, it was completely dwarfed by the various ultra-modern towers that surrounded it. Had Dubai been populated, if there had been any sign of life behind the thousands of windows, perhaps they might have seemed less threatening. As it was, Scarlett felt she was walking through an enormous cemetery. Everything was crowding in on her and it was all dead.
The casino could have arrived from another planet. It was covered in red and gold panels with two words – DUBAI CASINO – in glowing neon. But some of the letters had burned out so that it was the legend DUBAI SIN that flashed on and off as they approached.
There was a time when the casino would have looked out over the wide canal that flowed through the city, and Scarlett tried to imagine it with water taxis bobbing about, and sleek white yachts rocking gently at anchor. But the water had almost dried up, leaving two sloping banks of brown mud with a narrow trail of dark green slime where they met. A few boat
s remained but they had tipped over on their side. Any pretence of elegance or beauty that this place might have had, had long since gone.
Richard and Scarlett had both changed, picking fresh clothes from one of the many abandoned stores. Richard had expensive designer jeans, a new polo shirt and new trainers. Scarlett had picked out an ankle-length dress with a silk scarf. Martins had warned her to keep her head and arms covered. The two of them parked their car a short distance away and covered the last few hundred metres on foot. Richard left the keys in the car … just in case they needed to make a fast getaway. He also concealed his backpack with the precious knife in the boot.
A doorman stood in front of the entrance – only the second person they had seen since they had arrived. Despite the sluggish heat of the evening, he was dressed in a long coat with oversized gold buttons, epaulettes and a cap. As the two of them approached, he spoke to them in English.
“Good evening, sir. Welcome to the Dubai Casino.”
It was their first taste of the madness that Martins had described. They had come out of nowhere, from an empty city. Despite their new clothes, they hadn’t been able to wash. Richard hadn’t shaved for days. They both looked – and smelled – less than their best. And yet the man in his smart uniform, already holding the door open for them, was behaving as if they were regular customers, as if they had just stepped out of a chauffer-driven Rolls Royce or perhaps strolled in from the Sheraton Hotel a short way up the road.
They walked past him and into a reception area that was all glass and marble. Scarlett felt the cold breeze of an air-conditioning unit as it found its way beneath the silk that covered her arms and brushed against her skin. There were more men here, all of them Arabs: a concierge dressed in black tie and dark glasses, and three or four others wearing traditional white robes and headdresses. They were chatting among themselves as if they were old friends who had chanced to meet, but even here, Scarlett sensed a certain falseness. They were nervous. They needed to win in order to eat and drink. This was no pleasant social occasion. They were all at the mercy of the sheikh, who would be watching over them as they played.
They turned and walked towards a pair of swing doors set between two sculptures … palm trees, heavy and golden. One of the doormen noticed Richard and nodded in welcome. There was a metal detector at the door and they all passed through it. To one side, a woman in a tight-fitting, sparkly dress was being patted down by a blank-faced security guard. A huge, bearded man in Arab dress walked past, cradling a tiny chihuahua dog with a heavy platinum collar. Richard and Scarlett glanced at each other. They didn’t need to say anything. This place was weird.
But they needed the plane. And if they were going to fly, they needed its pilot. There was no other way. They walked through the metal detector and went in.
They were in a large, thickly carpeted room, with a ceiling illuminated by hundreds of tiny lights that had been set out at random, like stars. There were no windows, no exit signs – so that once they were in, they might imagine that there was no longer any way out. The air had a cold, antiseptic feel, like the inside of a fridge. About a hundred people had gathered here, a few of them in Arab dress but the majority in expensive Western suits – Armani, Prada, Paul Smith, Versace. Despite the low lighting, Scarlett had never seen more sunglasses. It was almost impossible to look at anyone without seeing reflections of herself. There were women too, whispering together, drinking brightly coloured cocktails. And everyone, the men and the women, were smothered in watches and jewellery, the different coloured stones glittering as they moved around the room.
In the middle of the casino, standing back to back, there were two lines of fruit machines. Huge mirrors on the walls reflected the blinking lights, the promises of pay-outs, the endlessly spinning reels. The players, perched on high stools, many of them smoking cigarettes, fed their silver coins into the slot, one after another, barely reacting whether they won or lost. Scarlett saw poker and blackjack being played, with croupiers, in white shirts and multicoloured waistcoats, dealing the cards out onto tables covered with green baize. There were two roulette wheels and a long table where a crowd had gathered to watch the throw of the dice. The atmosphere was hushed, expectant. But nobody really looked as if they were glad to be there.
And then two doors – wood-panelled with gold handles – crashed open and for a moment the games were forgotten as all eyes turned and Sheikh Rasheed Al Tamim made his entrance. It had to be him. He commanded the room before he had taken a step into it.
He was also wearing Western clothes; a silvery silk suit and a black shirt open at the collar to reveal the gold chain around his neck. There were gold rings on three of his fingers and a gold Rolex on his wrist. He himself was a thin, weedy man – and yet everything about him seemed designed to conceal it. He was wearing designer sunglasses, real gold, with large frames, and much of his face was covered with a black growth that wasn’t quite thick enough to be a beard and a moustache. He was surrounded by bodyguards in shiny suits. There were three of them, with bald heads and watchful eyes. A single woman came behind. His wife? She also seemed unhappy to be here. She was wearing a sober black dress with a scarf over her head, tied under her chin. Her eyes were downcast.
The sheikh looked around the room as if this was the first time he had ever been here and was surprised to find that anyone else had come. “Hello, hello, hello!” he called out. His voice was high-pitched, almost girlish. Richard and Scarlett looked at each other. It was obvious at once that the sheikh had been drinking. He was swaying on his feet and his face was fixed with a stupid grin. “Are we all having a good time?”
Everyone in the room applauded. Waiters hurried forward carrying glasses of champagne. There was a sofa – red velvet cushions and a gold frame – set up on a raised platform and the sheikh went over to it, followed by his retinue. His bodyguards stood around him, warning the crowds to keep their distance. The woman who had come with him sat down at the very edge. The gamblers returned to their games.
“So what do we do now?” Scarlett whispered.
“I don’t know.” Richard watched as the sheikh twisted a cigarette between his lips and one of the bodyguards leant forward with a gold lighter. The guard said something and he burst into childish laughter. “I suppose we’ve got to get his attention.”
“How do we do that?”
Scarlett looked around her – at the fruit machines, the dice table, finally at the roulette wheel. The ball had just finished spinning and the croupier was settling the bets … more people had lost than won. As he swept the multicoloured chips off the baize surface, he looked up and Scarlett started. For a moment, he seemed to examine her. Then he turned away, waiting while the bets for the next game were placed in front of him.
Scarlett turned to Richard. “I know what to do.”
“What…?” Richard began.
“Trust me!”
Before Richard could stop her she had marched forward to the roulette wheel, placing herself right in front of the sheikh, partly blocking his view. She spoke directly to the croupier and her voice was deliberately loud. “I want to play roulette,” she announced. “Is there a limit on this table?”
“There is no limit,” the croupier replied.
“So I can put on as much money as I want?”
“Yes, miss.”
“That’s very good.” Scarlett produced the wallet that Richard had taken from Rémy. “In that case, I want to bet five thousand dollars.”
The sheikh had been holding out his glass, waiting for it to be refilled, when this strange girl had made her appearance in front of him. He had also heard what she had just said. Slowly, he reached up and took off his sunglasses, examining her with small, lizard-like eyes. The croupier glanced in his direction, unsure whether to accept the bet.
“You! Young woman!” Sheikh Rasheed pointed at her. Scarlett turned. “How old are you?” the sheikh demanded.
“Fifteen.”
“You’re too young
to gamble.”
Scarlett looked him straight in the eye. Again, she spoke so that everyone could hear. “Are you afraid I’ll win?”
Something flared briefly in those lizard eyes. The sheikh examined her more closely and she wondered what was going on in his mind. It was probably better not to know. There was a half-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Have you got five thousand dollars?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And you don’t mind losing?”
“Maybe I won’t lose.”
“Are you going to put it on red or black?”
That was the obvious bet. The odds were fifty-fifty. If Scarlett won, she would double her money. If she lost, it would all go.
“I want to put it on a single number.”
“All of it? Five thousand dollars on a single number?” The sheikh’s voice was more high-pitched than ever. He burst into laughter. “You really want to do that? Then go ahead! That’s an awful lot of pocket money to lose but I’m not going to stop you.” He snapped out a command in Arabic and the croupier produced a handful of black chips, which he handed to Scarlett. Scarlett took out the banknotes and handed them over. She was aware of Richard, watching in horror. The croupier folded the money and slid it through a slot next to the table.
The entire casino was watching her, knowing that what she was proposing was insane. She could have bet on red or black, high or low, odd or even. These were all known as outside bets – with the lowest risk but also the lowest return. There were thirty-five numbers on the wheel but there was also a green zero and a double zero that pushed the odds heavily in the casino’s favour. Scarlett had a one-in-thirty-seven chance of winning. But if by some miracle the ball did land in whatever slot she chose, she would receive almost two hundred thousand dollars in return. The casino never made pay-outs like that.