Three Hours(78)
He thinks the footsteps have turned them into different people to their friends in the theatre, to his twin. Fear and imprisonment have eroded who they are. It’s not just that the people in the theatre are safe – just! – but they have phone chargers and loos, and they might seem like small things, but they aren’t at all small.
When they found out about 14 Words, Hannah was sick in their bin liner. She’s as white as a sheet; a ghost.
Rafi has to be okay, has to be. The woods are huge and they won’t find him. It’s still better that he’s outside than here in the library. But she imagines white supremacists hunting him down through the trees, Basi too, and it’s all her fault. If it wasn’t for her, Rafi and Basi would have got on a boat; if he hadn’t come back for her they’d be safe.
*
Through the snow and the trees Rafi has spotted a light coming from Junior School and he’s running as fast as he can through the woods towards it, the cat-’o-nine-tails wind whipping harder, the freezing air going deep into his lungs. He’ll get there soon and then Basi will be okay.
Basi had been a little angel as a baby, it was Rafi who was colicky with crying fits and screaming sessions. He’d made up for it by being the good boy; the easy child. But Basi the angel baby became naughty and disobedient, Qarrad Saghir – Little Monkey. On the Journey the last part of that little boy had disappeared.
But recently Rafi’s seen small signs of him again: a smile so wide his little teeth shone; a giggle that sounded like hiccups; last week Rafi saw him skip, a two-steps-only skip but a new rhythm. He still wets his bed and their foster mother is really kind about it, but Basi can’t be comforted. It started on the Journey, Basi asleep on the side of the road; a stain on the tarmac, the smell of it, and he woke up shaking with cold and cried because there were no dry trousers and pants and because he was ashamed. Dr Reynolds has told Basi that many refugee children Basi’s age routinely wet the bed. ‘You’re a casualty of war, Basi,’ he said, man-to-man; but Basi is still mortified.
Rafi reaches the wire-link fence round Junior School; the playground is deep in snow, everything different and strange. His phone has kept vibrating with calls: Benny and his foster parents – loads of times, as soon as they found out – and other friends and Rose Polstein, but he didn’t answer because how can any of them help him? And because he needs to conserve his phone’s juice for when he finds Basi. Rose Polstein has also texted him, telling him to ring her urgently, but she’ll just want to know that he’s hiding and he can’t, not till he’s found his brother.
The lock on the gate is broken and he walks through; no sight or sound of children, just the wind making the swings rock and the slide creak. He sees the hardback book on a swing, protected by the pirate ship canopy, a book of fairy tales, the jacket illustrated with woods and snow falling. He notices there’s a label attached – For Basi Bukhari – and remembers how kind everyone has been to Basi, giving him toys and clothes and books, and generous to Rafi too – a total stranger gave him a guitar, which he’s learning to play. When he sees Basi’s book he remembers all these strangers’ kindnesses; when they arrived, there’d been welcome banners, like arms stretching open.
He picks up the book to take to Basi and sees a wire. He throws it. The book explodes, birds startling out of the trees, and his right leg is alight with pain.
There are pieces of metal and burns through his jeans, a jagged piece of metal deep in his thigh. Feeling dizzy and sick, he takes hold of the larger piece of shrapnel and tries to pull it free of his leg, but it won’t come out. The startled birds have gone back to the trees but the air still hums with the shock of it.
*
Police surveillance UAVs are hunting for any terrorist drone over the pottery room. They have fifty minutes till Jamie Alton opens fire.
Lysander comes on to the screen.
‘We’ve deciphered a post Victor Deakin wrote on the 14 Words website, a month ago, which wasn’t so heavily encrypted. I’m sending it to you now.’
Rose reads: ‘The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim. If you’re a Muslim I’m going to enjoy shooting you in the head.’
Her first reaction is anxiety for Rafi and Basi Bukhari, their vulnerability stripped raw; but worrying about them won’t help them, do your job.
Victor taught himself ancient Greek and Latin for fun, so why’s he using such basic language?
She phones Stuart Dingwall in counterterrorism.
‘Stuart? Rose. You got the post? This doesn’t fit with Deakin.’
‘No, he’s copied it from a white supremacist called Patrick Stein.’
And that’s also strange, because why would Victor, a narcissistic psychopath who feels god-like, copy anyone?
‘What can you tell me about Stein?’ she asks.
‘Part of a terrorist organization in the US called The Crusaders, who planned to attack Muslims. Hold on, I’ll bring it up. Yes, their plot was uncovered by the FBI in October 2016; it was less than a month before the presidential election and it didn’t get a great deal of news coverage even in the US.’
But Victor Deakin saw it and must have followed it closely to be lifting words from Patrick Stein.
‘They saw themselves as “patriots resisting a Muslim takeover of the United States”,’ Stuart continues. ‘They planned to massacre as many Muslims as possible, who they called cockroaches.’