The building had once been a manufacturing center for farm equipment — oxen plows and fencing, cisterns and windmills — before being converted into a warehouse. But following the collapse of the Soviet Union, business had fallen off. The warehouse was all but empty now. Only a clothing importer still used the facility from time to time.
Gulzhan stopped at the lip of the canal and looked down at the oily water. Pieces of plastic and paper floated on the surface. The canal ran a quarter of a mile or so along the quay before spilling out into the harbor and the Caspian Sea. It too was used infrequently these days. Most of the shipping now was handled by the container port in Gurjev’s western suburb. Somewhere a seagull cawed. Gulzhan looked up. It was clouding up again. Soon it would rain.
“I’m waiting,” Hammel said.
Gulzhan turned and glared down at the man beside him. “I loved him,” he said. “You know that.”
“Your love is legendary.”
Gulzhan frowned. “I took him in when he had nothing. I fed him, Ali. I trained him. I put the clothes on his back.”
“All this is known to me.”
Gulzhan looked back at the canal. “Indeed,” he said with a small shrug. Then he added, like an afterthought, “He was using his Swiss bank accounts to buy options, to short securities on the New York Stock Exchange.”
Hammel said nothing but Gulzhan could hear him catch his breath. “It was stupid,” Gulzhan continued. “It jeopardized the mission. And it cost him his life.”
“You are sure of this?”
Gulzhan looked at Hammel with a mixture of horror and disbelief. He felt a spasm of revulsion in his throat. “Of course I’m sure,” he said. “Do you think I wanted this? After everything I did? I loved him, like my own son. I loved him!” He could feel his coffee-colored eyes begin to water. He turned away, embarrassed. What’s happening to me? he thought. I’m falling apart.
“It was written,” Hammel said. Then, after a moment, he added, “I believe you, Gulzhan Baqrah. Uhud was a greedy man. Vain. Intemperate.” He kicked a stone into the canal, dimpling the surface of the water. “He liked his clothes too much. His ears bristled with rings. He reminded me of a Tuareg poem, a heinena,” he said. “The insane son of Adam denies his death, forgets his way, loitering in darkness; his eye is full of fancy; he hears but never listens. If God looks into the mouth of he whose strident sound is empty, there will be pain. His walk is trained, his clothes refined; his neck rides stiffly on his chest; his lungs are filled with pride. The desert Djinn have gutted them within; they have no boundaries… But we Algerians are not the Lebanese,” he said, catching himself. He gripped Gulzhan with his eyes. “We’ve never had enough to miss.” Then he smiled and added blithely, “You did well to have him killed, Gulzhan. El Aqrab will be pleased.”
Gulzhan yanked his arm away. He stared with hatred at Hammel. “Of course he will. He’s always most pleased when I’m least happy.” With that he turned and walked away.
Ali Hammel followed him back along the alley to the courtyard. When they had reached the entrance to the warehouse, Gulzhan spun about and said, “I’ve done my job.” He pointed a thick finger at the small man’s chest. His great beard parted, glaring with a sudden gash of teeth. “Now make sure you do yours.”
Hammel stared at him and Gulzhan felt a chill creep though his groin. Not even his hatred of the Algerian could insulate him from the feelings he felt whenever he was around Hammel. Gulzhan surrounded himself with killers. Indeed, it was his job to manufacture them, to perfect them, to help them learn or hone their skills. But there was something about the Algerian that even he found disconcerting. It was his eyes, like the eyes of those little yellow snakes he used to crush with rocks as a small boy. Gulzhan had seen Hammel in action. The Algerian had that uncanny ability to freeze his enemies before he struck, to all but hypnotize them with a glance. It was as if he didn’t really kill them. He simply sucked them up into his sphere. He absorbed them into nothingness.
“With pleasure,” Hammel replied, but Gulzhan knew that he was lying. Unlike men who took pleasure in their work, no matter how perverse, Ali Hammel felt neither ecstasy nor pain. He was neither proud nor humble, unmotivated by greed or political ambition, by sex or power, nor by some denial of death; of that Gulzhan was convinced. No, the Algerian felt nothing. And this was why he feared him.
The men sat around on pillows on the floor, in a corner of the warehouse, beside their MB-814s. They ate in silence, intent on their chicken and couscous, seared lamb and disks of bread. Gulzhan watched them as they fed. The Egyptian, Auwal Al-Hakim, tore at the meat from the common plate, rending the flesh with sausage-like fingers, and then stuffing large chunks into his mouth. His greasy beard was speckled with skin. His ox-like eyes rolled back and forth in his head as he chewed.
The Lebanese known only as Ziad ate more delicately. He had stationed himself by the door. Every once in a while, he would pull himself up, stretch his right leg, and glance out of the window. Then he’d sit back down again. He picked at the food like a bird, a rust-colored vulture. He selected only the meatiest morsels, snatched them up, and then eyed them once again before popping them into his mouth.
The two men who’d helped Gulzhan hijack the train sat by themselves, tucked in the corner. They felt like outsiders, he knew. They were not only unsure of the strangers around them — the stuff of legend and cartoons all at once — but more so of themselves. They ate self-consciously, plucking off pieces and then stepping away, like bitches new to the pack.
And Ali Hammel simply sat there. He never touched the food. In fact, now that he thought about it, Gulzhan had never seen the Algerian eat anything, and they had shared many a meal together. He sat quietly watching the others, cleaning his gun — a 9-millimeter Glock 18. At one point, when most of the food had been consumed, Hammel stood up and moved about the group, pouring out sweet green tea from a brass carafe. He acted like a graceful serving boy and this made Gulzhan wonder. Hammel was no one’s servant, not even El Aqrab’s. He was a force unto himself.
The men leaned back upon their pillows. Gulzhan saw his opportunity and raised his glass, and quoted from Al-Waqi’ah, saying, “‘When the Event comes to pass, the coming of which no one can avert, some it will bring low and others it will exalt. When the earth is shaken violently, and the mountains are crumbled into dust and become like motes floating in the air, you will be divided into three groups: those on the right, those on the left, and those who are foremost. They will be the honored ones, dwelling in the Gardens of Bliss.’” He drank from his glass and the men followed suit. “You will be buried in your own clothes, covered in blood,” he editorialized. “You will need no threefold linen shroud, no winding cloth. You’ll be shahid — true witnesses. ‘Say not of those who are killed in the cause of Allah that they are dead; they are not dead but alive; only you perceive it not… Surely, to Allah we belong, and to Him shall we return.’”