Chapter 22: Say it, Don’t Spray It

I went over the call with Kate in my head, slightly upset at the fact I had broken off our conversation just to get out of the heat. Maybe it hadn’t been the heat so much as the fact I didn’t want to be reminded of how much I missed her. That girl isn’t just catnip to me: she’s oxygen. And every time we were apart, there was nothing for it but for me to practice holding my breath.

I also worried about the fact people had started to miss me, all over sodding Doctor Who! It’s the shittiest piece of sci-fi before and since Babylon 5. Seriously: I’d sit through an entire season of the Power Rangers to avoid one episode of Doctor Who. It’s got some nice ideas, like the Weeping Angels and the Police Call Box, but other than that it’s cardboard sets and a lot of made up tech used to create artificial suspense. Usually I’m happy to try and join in with any British obsession, even if most don’t agree with me. I’ve watched seven whole episodes of Eastenders before I threw anything at the screen. I’ve tried tea with milk. Twice! I quite like a Sunday Roast. And if I spend another fifty to a hundred years in the UK, I may even, one day, enjoy going to a pub. But Dr. Who? Fuck that noise, seriously.

When I stepped back into my room in fresh underwear and began to gather clothes for a new outfit, perhaps something slightly less insane than a three piece suit, given that I’d already performed my duties for the day, I suddenly noticed I had come to a decision. While I was pining over Kate, other parts of my brain had apparently calmly worked out a risk assessment: I would stay here, regardless. Not until armed officers came to drag me away would I quit this search for whoever was behind the attack on my family and the murder of my friend. I’d hole up at the garage and slink through the night like a low rent Batman if need be, but I wasn’t going anywhere until I’d created a few substantial puddles of blood. Time to go shopping.

“Happy now?” I asked K-T, as I got back into the car after having pressed some banknotes into the hands of a smiling and very sweaty Pakistani.

“Thank you for having me cleaned.”

“Welcome. Drive us to the garage. And I’d like my pistol please.”

There was a small pause as the car automatically pulled out of the car wash and merged with traffic.

“Did you request your side arm?”

“Yes.”

“Is there an emergency? Can I be of assistance?”

“No. Not right now. Come on, gimme.”

There came a slight whirring noise from the center console, and then the glove box opened. My Ruger LCP and an extra clip appeared. Then I realised I was only wearing a polo neck shirt and there was absolutely no way to carry this thing around without being spotted. I grunted.

“Actually, hang on to it for now. I’m not dressed for concealed carry.”

“A nylon holster is available in door pocket three.”

“Yeah, but that’s still conspicuous. Look, I want to review your observation footage. What’s the best way to do that?”

“I have selected a number of clips that show movement near the mosque entrance. Total runtime for all footage gathered so far: seven hours, nineteen minutes. My selection is one hour, eight minutes. There is also observation footage for the owner of the green sports car you asked me to follow, which you have not reviewed.”

“Oh yeah! I’d forgotten about that. Well, that’s my afternoon sorted. Hey, swing by that supermarket with the pineapple sign on the way, so I can get a cold drink.”

“I was unable to parse that statement.”

“Switch to manual drive.”

“You have control. Speed camera in 170 metres.”

In the car park I had a quick look at the footage K-T had gathered. It was a lot, because her A.I. was quite limited. Basically, if it was bipedal and moved near the door, she captured it.

“So you based your selection on movement only?”

“Yes.”

“So you can’t, say, just show me footage of the Imam?”

“I can’t show you footage of any one person. I can only identify if people are walking or standing.”

“Makes sense. You’re a self driving car, after all. Why would you need to know more about a person than where they’re going?”

“I cannot answer questions about extensions to my software. Would you like me to forward your question to Mr. Bamford?”

“No. Never mind. I was talking to myself, actually. AH! There he is! Pause. Can you identify the man in the shot now?”

“I can only identify if people are walking or standing.”

“Okay, let’s drive to the garage. At least we’ll be out of the sun.”

Two hours later I had a pretty good idea of Imam Musa’s routine. He always arrived on foot, usually just two to three minutes before the call to prayer. He preferred taking the outside staircase to the top of the prayer tower, the minaret. And between the second and fourth prayer of the day, he’d usually stay in the mosque. His son would deliver what seemed to be a warm meal after the midday prayer. I couldn’t tell if he had visitors, because the mosque seemed to function as a community centre of sorts: old men with frightening facial hair would shuffle in and out all the time, sometimes seen out by the Imam himself.

“End of footage. Would you like to review it again?”

“God no. But your selection was quite good. Well done.”

I sat inside K-T, in the cavernous empty garage I had hired for her. It was warm outside the car, because the building’s AC would generally not be running. I hadn’t been there in a while, not since I’d set up her induction charger. She was able to open and close the garage door and position herself over the charger, so she could always recharge without any assistance.

“There is also footage of the owner of the green sports car you asked me to follow.”

“Oh yeah. Well, let’s have a look.”

The footage began when K-T identified the green Huracán Spyder and began to pursue it. That wasn’t particularly interesting to watch.

“Fast forward to his house.”

“The vehicle entered a private structure at Sultan Qaboos Bin Said road. I was not able to map a house number to the location. However, I do know the radio frequencies required to open the gate and disable the alarm system.”

“Do they use rolling codes?”

“Only the house alarm. I have gathered sufficient events to extrapolate the sequence.”

Radio signals to remotely operate doors and enable or disable alarms used to be very basic: just a simple beeping pattern, broadcast at a particular frequency, usually 433 or 313 Megahertz. But as these devices became more popular, manufacturers introduced a new layer of security: so called ‘rolling codes’ would require a specific numerical pattern, which changed after each use. Recording a signal to play it back later was therefore no longer an option, as that recording had just ‘expired’. This system did add a significant complication, though: the transmitter (usually inside the car or on a key chain) and the receiver needed to be in sync. After all, if you accidentally press the button on the transmitter when you are nowhere near the garage door, which happens quite easily, it will skip ahead one code. That’s why the receiver will typically calculate the next 256 codes ahead of time, and accept any one of them. This will also tell it where the remote thinks it is in the sequence, so it can adjust itself. If you somehow manage to force 256 accidental button presses during your milk run, you are locked out of your garage and you’ll have to link the transmitter to the system again.

If this sounds foolproof to you, I would strongly suggest looking for a career outside crypto security. Because to people like me, this leaves a security gap large enough for me to literally drive a car through. YOUR car, as it happens. All I need are three (but preferably more) signals to calculate the sequence. Sure, the numbers are obscured using an interleaved trinary bit fixed code, but that is only going to stop your run of the mill Polish car booster with access to a Radio Shack and a soldering iron.

The problem here, and stop me if I am getting too technical, is with the random numbers fed into the system to generate a list of codes. This is because it’s really hard to get computers to spit out random numbers. Like, REALLY hard. That’s why TrueCrypt, a hard disk encryption tool, would ask the user to draw random patterns with the mouse for at least a minute, which was used as the ‘seed’ for random number generation. The best way to get random numbers is to use an actual Lotto machine. You know what I mean: a rolling cage with numbered balls, picked by a blindfolded volunteer. That’s how the Allies created their one-use encryption pads for agents in the field. Some English ladies served their country by picking random numbers out of a hat all day long, to create all those pads.

Anyway, I didn’t need my pocket calculator app for this one. If I know about it, you can be damned sure the intelligence agencies of the world know it, too. And that is why K-T had been fitted with a small module which was custom built to intercept any radio signals carrying a Manchester code (a method for binary phase shift keying – look, you got Google, don’t you? Look it up) signature or similar, and do some sums. And if she couldn’t manage, I could certainly have a go at it.

This all presumes that I wanted to break into that dude’s house. He had been rude to me, but I don’t (yet) impose the death penalty just for that. But something told me it would be worth my time to watch the footage K-T had gathered and so I watched him as he drove through some automatic gates, waited for a garage door to open and drove inside a relatively small but rather luxurious two-storey house. It had a fairly low wall around it, which was unusual here. I guess he didn’t have any women he needed to lock up. The garage itself was, from what I could see on the footage K-T had captured from across the street, large enough to hold at least four cars.

“Well, this confirmed my suspicion that bad people will always prosper, but I’m not here to steal cars.”

K-T needed five seconds to parse that, but this time she did rather well.

“I have recorded this vehicle’s license plate twice at the Hittin mosque. There may be a relation,” she said.

“Oh, really? I wish I could remember that guy’s name. We’ve been introduced, but...”

“The vehicle is registered to one Abdulrahim bin Musa.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t really ... Wait ... bin Musa. So ... son of Musa?”

“I am unable to parse that statement.”

“Abdul! That guy is called Abdul. Short for Abdulrahim. And he’s the son of Musa. Musa ibn’ Ja’far, the Imam.”

Ibn, ibin or bin are all the same word, meaning ‘son of’. Whether or not you spell it as ibn’ or ibin depends on how you transcribe Arabic to the Roman alphabet, but bin or ibn’ depends on where the word is placed in a sentence. Is it any wonder I can’t get a grip on this language? Even so, I was fairly sure that this car fanatic was the Imam’s other son.

“Noted,” said K-T.

“Oh, sorry. Speaking out loud again. You know, it might be fun to have a look around his place. Maybe I can find something to piss off his dad. Are you doing anything tonight?”

“I am unable to parse that statement.”

I did some shopping at a hardware store before dinner. We all need duck tape, jump cables, transformers and some copper pipe, don’t we? Then I called on Asim and we had dinner together at KFC (his choice, which I deeply regretted) while I probed him for more information about his friend Abdul. Asim didn’t really consider him a close friend, but more of a fellow car enthusiast. But he could confirm that his dad was an Imam somewhere, which was good enough for me. Asim then suggested we both head to the airport and get on a flight to Dubai to see a movie, but I told him I had other plans.

“Shame! I was enjoying your company. What are your plans? Perhaps I could join?”

“I think I’m going to be violently sick in a bucket, Your Royal Highness,” I said, pointing at my half-eaten burger. It tasted of nothing but fat and salt. And not in a good way.

“HAHAAA! Well, next time maybe you cook for us again. I’m sorry my friend, I thought you would tell me if you didn’t like KFC.”

“I just hadn’t ever been to one, so I didn’t know what to expect. But I have to plan tomorrow’s lesson for the princess. Insh’allah, we will eat together again soon.”

“Insh’allah! Hmmm ... It doesn’t sound right when you say it, Carstairs. Okay then. Have a good night.”

Eleven herbs and spices? Fuck that. Grease is not a spice. Anyway, I got into my palace staff car and took off.

“The number you have dialled is not currently in service.”

“It’s me. Is he in?”

“The resident left seventeen minutes ago.”

“Good. On my way. Send your location to my phone.”

“Understood.”

I parked in a side street, if such a concept can be said to exist in Saudi Arabia, and walked to the entrance of the house. My watch was charged, so I could stay in contact with K-T. She was parked across the street, not standing out between a silver BMW and a glisteningly white Mitsubishi Triton. Those were the cars people here parked outside, because their garages would only have one or two spaces and those were reserved for their nice cars.

I was dressed in jeans and a shirt, unusual for me. I even wore tennis shoes, which I had bought only this afternoon. Westerners would stand out here, but it was already dark and street lights were few and far between. I did wear a black baseball cap and sunglasses, though. A security lamp with a motion detector flicked on when I approached the gate.

“Open it,” I said to my watch. K-T sent the signal and I heard the actuator switching on the electric motor that opened the fence. I walked through without breaking my stride.

“Close.”

My watch display flashed green for a second. I walked up to the house and rang the doorbell. A bit brazen, but it would flush out any nannies or house guests, and it looked a lot less suspicious to neighbours. There were lights on inside, but Abdul didn’t strike me as the sort of person who gave a toss about the environment, or indeed the cost of light bulbs. If someone answered the door now, I’d still have to explain how I got past the gate, but I would just kick them in the nadgers and do a runner. I didn’t really expect anyone to be home.

After two rings I asked K-T to open the garage door. She had received the ‘arm’ signal for the alarm when Abdul left the house, so she was able to calculate the next code with ease. The garage door opened silently and a fluorescent light flickered on. I heard the starter struggling, with that specific sound I always associate with Kate’s hamster gnawing the bars of his cage. Heh ... Kate’s hamster. That was a while ago.

Okay, story time: she’d had it for about a year and the fucking thing had figured out how to open the cage. It never went very far, so we weren’t bothered. Then one day my parents got new wall to wall carpet for the bedroom, so we cleared it out and a carpet fitter came in to install the new carpet. This man, like my dad, smoked ‘shag’, as we called it. By that I mean he carried around a small pouch of tobacco and some rolling paper, and rolled his own. I stayed in my room as he worked, merrily surfing the internet at a blistering 28.8 kbps.

After about half an hour I heard some frenzied tapping with a mallet. I assumed this to be part of the installation process, so I ignored it. A minute later he let out a furious curse, so I went to see what that was about. The man wasn’t too pleased about having to explain himself to a fifteen year old, but by then I was mature enough to handle tradesmen. Kate was at grandma’s house.

“What was that?” I asked.

“I uhm ... though I’d lost my shag pouch.”

He had it in his hands.

“That one?”

“Yeah. But I found it.”

“Well, that’s great.”

“Yes and no. What I want to know is what that bump was I just hammered flat in that corner.”

Yup.

Anyway, moving on. I ducked underneath the garage door when it was not even halfway open, and ordered K-T to close it. The light stayed on, presumably set on a timer. I put my gloves on and had a look around.

There were three other cars there: a BMW i8 with butterfly doors, a Bentley Bentayga with a horrible matte finish and a dark blue Audi R8 Spyder. All paid for by doing a decent job in service of his fellow man, I was sure of that. He was probably a teacher, or a fire fighter. Those people absolutely rake it in, as we all know.

But of more interest to me than the cars was a stack of about fifteen plastic canisters, filled with ethyl alcohol. According to the label they had once held wiper fluid, but it said EtOH on all of them, written on the side with thick, black marker pen. EtOH is the common abbreviation for it. I guess someone with a bit of chemical know-how was brewing this stuff in a secret location, and selling it on. You can drink ethanol, although no sane person drinks it straight. But it is also used as a fuel booster, although this seemed like rather a lot. Even so, this was an accident waiting to happen. Ethyl alcohol burns invisibly, but ferociously. Good to know...

Besides the cars there was a well-equipped tool rack, including a rolling cart with lots of drawers that presumably contained wrenches and such. There was also a stack of racing tyres in the corner. In fact, the only thing missing was a Playboy Centerfold pinned to the wall.

I also went into the house, which looked like it was copied from a movie about a rich gangster with a penchant for minimalism. Gleaming black and white surfaces, designer chairs (hello replica Arne Jacobsen Egg Chair) and an LCD screen the size of a ping pong table, that was mounted flat on the wall and had its cables hidden in a white cable tray. He also had what must have been the only decent sofa in the Kingdom, a mid-century modern design with wooden legs. It was upholstered with red fabric and stood out nicely in this black and white room.

“K-T, everything alright out there?” I asked. Speaking to my wrist was still a bit weird. The watch briefly flashed green, so I continued my search.

Truth be told, I might very well have ended up with an apartment like this if I had been left to my own devices instead of running into Monique. It was clean to the point of sterile, he had Marie Kondo’ed the everliving fuck out of his place and I was done searching it in about ten minutes. There was nothing of interest here. He did have a Qu’ran on his bedside cabinet, but other than that and some traditional clothes in his wardrobe I found very little that told me anything about the owner, except that he knew his furniture. No IKEA crap here.

I was about to leave through the garage, but my eye was caught by a cardboard box with Chinese lettering on it, plus a yellow warning label stuck on the side. Explosives? Be still my beating heart!

It turned out to be a box of heavy duty fireworks. We’re not talking fire crackers and bottle rockets, but serious shit. I don’t know all the names, because fireworks scare the crap out of me. In The Netherlands we ‘celebrate’ New Years Eve with fireworks, which means the entire nation turns into a motherfucking war zone for about three days. On January first, the streets are lined with red pulp from firecrackers, thousands of pets have run away from home, hundreds of people are in hospital, mostly with severe eye damage, half a dozen houses, often old farmhouses with thatched roofs, have burned to the ground, two or three idiots will have killed themselves with illegal explosives and half the nation begs our politicians to ban fireworks as of next year. The other half had really good fun. My friend Pieter Koffermans lost two fingers to this madness when I was seven and from that day I was done with it. Holy fuck, I can still picture those stumps. He was right-handed, too. Not having to deal with that shit is one of the reasons I prefer living in the UK.

I examined the contents of the box. Five thick rockets that looked as if they could take out an airbus. A box of what looked like blasting caps to me. (I featured in a war movie, if you recall. There were one or two scenes that involved gun fire and one explosion, so I had a chance to see how the special effects supervisor set it all up.) A box of what I call ‘rotjes’, but I have no idea what they’re called in English. Fire crackers? Some flares that, by the looks of it, were supposed to create a bright red light. There wasn’t all that much, but it was certainly enough to cause a bit of mayhem. I was tempted to take the box with me, but given how easy it was to get into this place, perhaps it was better to leave it here until I had formulated a plan. If I came back, I’d also take most if not all of that ethanol.

“Close the gate. You can leave now.”

K-T’s lights flicked on and without a sound she drove off. I could see the figure of a Saudi man behind the wheel. I walked back to my palace car and took my time getting home. A plan was brewing.

Monday, August 24^th, 2015. Saudi royal palace, guest annex.

The next day started badly. Or weirdly, if you will. As per usual I ordered breakfast to be delivered to my room. I’d picked out a nice suit, a bespoke Brioni Laroche I’d had made with Melody in tow. She had picked out the fabric, the lining and the buttons. Then she selected five shirts that would go well with it. I don’t have bespoke dress shirts, by the way. Caroline swears by them but I’ve had two made and I honestly can’t tell the difference from a decent Brooks Brothers or a Turnbull & Asser off the shelf. I picked out a necktie Kelly had given me for my last birthday and felt like a million bucks, or at least a million riyal.

Breakfast came just when I had done my necktie, so I placed the tray on my desk, pulled up a chair and turned on the Bose hi-fi set I had ‘inherited’ from the Professor. It was tuned to an Internet Jazz station. Benny Goodman’s Ridin’ High had just begun. I don’t believe in omens, but this would be a good one in my book.

Breakfast was my standing order: three slices of whole wheat toast, jam, a boiled egg, juice, half-cream milk, a slice of Emmenthal and what the kitchen called a German Bun. There would often also be something else, as they often had left-overs from banquets. You’d get some, like it or not. Could be some sort of tuna or chicken salad, some hummus, a bunch of grapes or a honey-yoghurt dessert. Today it was a small white cardboard box that held a large profiterole, about five inches in diameter. I know these things as ‘Bossche bol’ in Dutch, or as a ‘Moorkop’ (Moor’s head) if covered in chocolate fondant icing, but I’m aware there are regional variations so I cut into this one to make sure it was filled with whipped cream and not, say, goats’ cheese or salmon.

It exploded in my face, sounding like a wet fart.

“GODGLOEIENDE GODVERDOMME!” I bellowed. That’s Dutch for ‘oh deary me’. I was covered from head to sternum in goopy, sticky cream! It had gotten into my eyes, too. I stood up and staggered back, almost stumbling over my chair. I had enough presence of mind to change my rants to English, but not nearly enough self control to stop cursing altogether. It didn’t help that I caught sight of myself in a mirror, which was fixed to the outside of the wardrobe. Bloody hell, I looked a mess! Not even a bunch of clowns with a pie throwing act would look as besmirched as I did.

“Are you okay?” asked Amina, who appeared behind me. She had used her key to let herself in.

“NO, I AM NOT! Look at me! Pffptpt.”

She held her hand in front of her mouth.

“What happened?”

“The ... the ... bloody pastry exploded! I can’t see ... I can’t see!”

“I’ll get you a towel. DON’T WIPE! I close the door first. No, no, stand still!”

Instinct demanded that I wiped everything out of my eyes and off my face, but if I shook my hands clean I’d cover the entire room with this stuff. I had taken the entire blast in the face and so far the damage was contained to me, the bed and the carpet.

Amina handed me a towel from my own bathroom. It was still damp from the shower I’d had.

“Oh my Lord ... What a disaster. Look at this suit! It’s ruined,” I muttered, as she helped me to clean my face and hands.

“We can dry-clean. It’s okay. Your food explode?”

“Yeah! I cut into it and BLAM! Look at me. I look like Annabel Chong!”

“Who?”

“Yeah, never mind. Can I get another towel?”

“I bring you towel. First let me help you out of the jacket. Why you even wear a jacket inside?”

“Standards, dear. Standards which must be maintained. Especially here. Oh, this is ruined. I look like Kim Kardashian after an audition, it’s really...”

I lost Amina with that joke. She let out some sort of yelp and sank to her knees. Her shoulders gyrated as she tried to suppress her laughter. All I could do was stand there and wait, or else I’d track all this mess through my room.

“Eeh eeh eeh eeh eeh eeh eeh eeh eeh eeh eeh eeh eeh eeh!” she went, for about a minute.

“If you’re quite finished, I’d like to trouble you for another towel.”

She got up and avoided eye contact as she opened the door and retrieved another towel from her service trolley.

“How come you know Kim Kardashian? Give me jacket, I put it on this towel.”

“Well, why wouldn’t I? Thank you.”

“Because you are British man, who drinks tea and reads books! And I understand the joke about the audition, you know. That is a mean joke. Shirt?”

I have no compunctions about taking off my dress shirt in front of women. There’s another shirt underneath, after all. Oh yes, even when it’s forty-two degrees out!

“You seemed to think it was funny anyway,” I said, as I went down the row of buttons. She had a large towel spread out on the bed, to gather up my clothes.

“I may be a Saudi girl, but I understand more than you think. T-shirt, too.”

“Prepare to be underwhelmed. Do you really think the dry cleaner can save that?”

“I clean it first, in the laundry room. It is sugar, right? I let it dry and scrape off.”

“You’re a lifesaver. Okay, I’ll go hit the shower. I’ve got ten minutes until I’m due with the Princess. Again, thank you.”

“You are welcome, Mr. Carstairs.”

I had a quick shower, making sure to scrub my nose and ears, was decidedly less fussy about my other suit (it’s not as if the Princess would even see it) and made it just in time.

After the lesson, which wasn’t the highlight of either of our day, I went back to my room. As expected, it was as if nothing had ever happened. Amina had even cleaned the carpet. Too bad I couldn’t show my appreciation, not even with a tip. There was an envelope with her name on it on one of the shelves in my bathroom, but it remained untouched. I sat out the midday prayer and went to the main palace for lunch. As there were plenty of tables I lounged there until most people had returned to work, drinking tea and perusing Al-Ahram Weekly, an Egyptian broadsheet in English with a tiny circulation of about 50,000, which some civil servants in the palace would read and leave behind on a table filled with other periodicals I couldn’t read. At about two in the afternoon, when the dining hall staff began to clear out the buffet, I got up and walked to Anaïs’ kitchen. She and I needed to have a serious discussion.

I found her mopping the floor, or rather I spotted her doing that through the round windows in the swing doors. I waited until she had her back to me, sneaked in and grabbed her neck, making sure the carving block was out of reach. I also put my hand over her mouth. She froze as I whispered:

“Hey, froggy? Unless you want to find out if I’m really an assassin, STOP SENDING ME EXPLODING PASTRY!”

“MMMMM! MM-MMM?”

“Yes. I thought I’d give you a surprise, too. I’ll let go now.”

She seemed remarkably relaxed as she turned round.

“So, you finally come. I was wondering myself.”

“Beg your pardon? Last time I was here, you literally threatened me with a knife! I’m only here because I really don’t want to end up with Erikiophobia.”

“WHAT?!”

“Fear of pastry.”

She shook her head for half a second, like a dog who just drank from a bowl.

“Is that a real zing?!”

“I don’t know! I just looked up the ancient Greek word for pastry and stuck on ‘phobia’. That’s how that works. But seriously, you ruined a three thousand pound suit with that stunt! And you could have blinded me with that sugar, you know! That can cause an infection!”

She smiled and folded her arms in front of her chest.

“Non. That mixture had no sugar in it. You didn’t taste?”

“TASTE?! I spent five minutes rinsing it out of every hole in my head!”

She laughed! She actually LAUGHED! Then she stared at my face, as if she pictured it slathered in goop. I gave her a few seconds.

“Are you finished?”

“No, I am French. Heeheehee!”

“Not FINNISH! I mean, are you DONE. Seriously, what did I do to deserve that?”

She shrugged.

“You didn’t react to my notes.”

“Which notes?”

“I write you notes! Under the plate, in the napkin, I even wrote on the bottom of the pastry the last time, on the ... plaquette. You know? Like paper. My friend Datu, he makes sure you get it.”

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Carstairs of Arabia

Ron Dudderie

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