Osama Read online

  Osama

  Lavie Tidhar

  ‘The author of Osama is young, ambitious, skilled and original. Osama is an ingenious inversion of modern history: Osama bin Laden is the central character in a string of pulp novels allegedly written by one Mike Longschott. The terrorist crimes exist, in this novel, in a different realm… excellent, evocative and atmospheric.’

  — Award-winning novelist and author of The Prestige Christopher Priest

  In a alternate world without global terrorism Joe, a private detective, is hired by a mysterious woman to find a man: the obscure author of pulp fiction novels featuring one Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante… Chased by unknown assailants, Joe’s identity slowly fragments as he discovers the shadowy world of the refugees, ghostly entities haunting the world in which he lives. Where do they come from? And what do they want?

  Lavie Tidhar was in Dar-es-Salaam during the American embassy bombings in 1998, and stayed in the same hotel as the Al Qaeda operatives in Nairobi. Since then he and his now-wife have narrowly avoided both the 2005 London, King’s Cross and 2004 Sinai attacks—experiences that led to the creation of Osama.

  In a alternate world without global terrorism Joe, a private detective, is hired by a mysterious woman to find a man: the obscure author of pulp fiction novels featuring one Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante…

  Joe’s quest to find the man takes him across the world, from the backwaters of Asia to the European Capitals of Paris and London, and as the mystery deepens around him there is one question he is trying hard not to ask: who is he, really, and how much of the books are fiction? Chased by unknown assailants, Joe’s identity slowly fragments as he discovers the shadowy world of the refugees, ghostly entities haunting the world in which he lives. Where do they come from? And what do they want? Joe knows how the story should end, but even he is not ready for the truths he’ll find in New York and, finally, on top a quiet hill above Kabul—nor for the choice he will at last have to make…

  In Osama, Lavie Tidhar brilliantly delves into the post-9/11 global subconscious, mixing together elements of film noir, non-fiction, alternative history and international thriller to create an unsettling—yet utterly compelling—portrayal of our times.

  WINNER OF THE 2012 WORLD FANTASY AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL.

  ‘An awesome book, dark, twisty alt-universe terrorist noir.’

  — Lauren Beukes, author of Zoo City

  ‘Bears comparison with the best of Philip K Dick’s paranoid, alternate-history fantasies. It’s beautifully written and undeniably powerful.’

  — The Financial Times

  ‘A strange, melancholy and moving reflection, torquing politics with the fantastic, and vice virtuosically versa.’

  — best selling author China Miéville

  ‘Not a writer to mess around with half measures…brings to mind Philip K Dick’s seminal science fiction novel The Man in the High Castle.’

  — The Guardian

  ‘The author is young, ambitious, skilled and original. Osama is an ingenious inversion of modern history...excellent, evocative and atmospheric.’

  — best selling author Christopher Priest

  OSAMA

  By

  Lavie Tidhar

  For Elizabeth, who was there

  Always start with a big explosion

  - Mike Longshott

  PROLOGUE

  —a fake Yemeni passport—

  The Hilltop Hotel stands on Ngiriama Road in downtown Nairobi. On the busy street outside are shoe-shiners; scratch-card stands; taxi-drivers; dusty shops selling stationary, rice, spices from Zanzibar, tinned foods and fresh tomatoes; down the road a little is an Indian restaurant. Electric fans move dust around inside the low-ceilinged buildings. The Hilltop itself is a run-down establishment catering mainly to backpackers.

  The men in room 107a were not backpackers. They had checked into the hotel using fake passports, and were in the final stages of preparing to commit an act of mass murder. They did not, perhaps, see themselves as murderers, though under both the American and Kenyan penal code that is what they would be considered. The men believed they were acting on God’s behalf, and perhaps they were right. God was on their side. Soon they would be successful.

  * * *

  Mohammed Odeh arrived in Nairobi on the fourth of August. It was a Tuesday. He had come off a night bus from Mombassa at 7:30am, and checked into the Hilltop Hotel under a fake Yemeni passport, into room 102b. He went to sleep, getting up just before noon. He met with the others. He was dressed as a Muslim cleric, complete with a long beard. Later, he changed his clothes, putting on trousers and a shirt. He also shaved his beard.

  He left on Wednesday evening. He spent his last few hours in Nairobi shopping. He had his shoes shined on Moi Avenue, near the American embassy. At 10:00pm he got on a flight to Pakistan.

  * * *

  August seventh was a Friday. The US ambassador was meeting with Kenyan Trade Minister Joseph Kamotho at the Ufundi Cooperative Bank near the embassy. The United States Embassy was a concrete building comprising seven floors, five above-ground, two below. Standing at Post One was Marine Corporal Samuel Gonite. The detachment commander, Gunnery Sergeant Cross, was making his rounds.

  Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-Owhali was dressed that morning in black shoes, a white short-sleeved shirt, blue jeans and jacket. He carried a 9mm Beretta. He also carried four stun grenades. At 9:20am he made a phone call. The truck, a Toyota Dyna, had already been loaded with boxes full of eight hundred kilograms of TNT, cylinder tanks, batteries, detonators, fertilizer, and sand bags. Al-Ohwhali entered the truck on the passenger seat. Driving was a Saudi man known as Azzam. Leading the way in a white Datsun pickup truck was a third man. He was known as Harun.

  They arrived at the embassy compound just before 10:30am. Azzam drove the truck to the rear parking lot. A mail van was leaving, and he waited for it to pass before driving up to the drop-bar. Al-Owhali stepped out of the truck. He walked towards the lone guard when he realised he had left his jacket — and his Beretta — in the truck. He still had the stun grenades. He shouted at the guard, demanding that he raise the bar. The guard refused. Al-Owhali pulled the pin out of one grenade and threw it at the guard. There was an explosion. The guard ran away, shouting. Azzam drew the Beretta from Al-Owhali’s jacket and began firing at the embassy windows. Al-Owhali began to run. A moment later, Azzam pressed the detonator button.

  * * *

  The explosion tore a crater in the ground. It blasted windows and tumbled concrete, and made men and women fly through the air as they died. Nearby Haile Selassie Avenue was strewn with debris. The windows of the Cooperative Bank House facing the avenue were blown by the blast. The American ambassador was knocked unconscious by the blast and cut by flying glass. The small bank building behind the embassy collapsed onto the chancery’s emergency generator, spilling thousands of gallons of diesel fuel into the basement of the embassy. The diesel fuel ignited.

  Two hundred and twelve people died in the attack. Four thousand were wounded. One woman, a Kenyan tea-lady from the Ufundi House offices, was trapped under the rabble. Her name was Rose Wanjiku. Rescuers, including marines and an Israeli special rescue unit, tried to reach her. She communicated with them constantly. She had been buried for five days. She died several hours before they finally reached her.

  * * *

  Mohammed Odeh landed in Karachi on the morning of August seven, a short time after the attack. As he went through immigration the first news of the bombing could be heard on the radio. He smiled. He passed through the airport and stepped out into the sunshine. Once outside, he located a phone box, and dialled a number.

  ‘Emir?’ he said into the silence of the mouthpiece. He took a deep breath. ‘With the grace of God, we are successful.’

 
PART ONE

  THE SECRET WAR

  puddles of light

  ——

  In the summer the sunlight falls down on Vientiane and turns walls and people translucent. Puddles of sunlight collect in street corners, and scooters pass through them and splash light onto shop fronts and down to the canals that run through the city toward the Mekong. The sunlight stains shirts with dark patches of sweat, and sends dogs to seek shelter in the shade of parked cars. Peddlers move sluggishly along the road with their wares of bamboo baskets, fruit and red-pork baguettes. The whole city seems to pause, its skin shining, and wait for the rains to come and bring with them some coolness.

  Joe put down the book on the low bamboo table and sighed. The small china cup before him contained strong Laotian mountain coffee, sweet with the two sugars he liked to use, which was overdoing it, he knew, but that was the way he liked it. Beside him was an ashtray containing two cigarette stubs. Also on the table was a soft packet of cigarettes and a Zippo lighter, a plain one, which sat on top of the cigarettes. He sat, as he did every morning, in the small coffee shop facing the car park of the Talat Sao market in downtown Vientiane. Through the glass windows he could watch the girls walk past.

  The book was a worn paperback with a garish, colourful cover. It showed a multi-story building in the final stages of collapse, a dusty African street, and people running away from a blast. The book was called Assignment: Africa and, in an only slightly smaller subtitle, announced it as the third title in the series Osama Bin-Laden: Vigilante. The unlikely name of the author was Mike Longshott.

  Joe reached for the packet on the table and extracted a cigarette, his third. He lit up with the Zippo and stared out of the window. Soft jazz played in the air. Every morning Joe came here, walking the half-hour distance from his apartment on Sokpaluang Road, past the bus station and the adjacent fruit and vegetable market, past tuk-tuk drivers, dogs and squawking chickens and the large sign that extolled the virtue of Keeping Our Country Clean — All Good Citizen Must Pick Up Litter, across the traffic lights and into the Talat Sao, the Morning Market, and into the small air-conditioned coffee shop that served more as his office than his office ever did.

  He sat there for a long time and was not disturbed. Staring out through the glass windows he could see friends meet and walk away, laughing. A mother walked past with her two children, holding their hands. Three men shared a cigarette outside, gesturing with their hands as they talked, then wandered off. A girl appeared on the steps and seemed to wait for something to happen. Five minutes later a boy appeared through the doors and her smile lit up her face, and they walked away, though without acknowledging each other. A village woman came in through the car park carrying baskets. A businessman in a suit walked down the stairs accompanied by an entourage, all hurrying towards a black car and its sheltered air-conditioning. A long time ago Joe had learned that it was sometimes easiest to feel alone amongst people. He no longer let it disturb him, but as he sat there, isolated from the outside by the transparent glass windows, he felt for a moment disconnected from time, all contact between him and the rest of humanity removed, cauterized, his connection to the people outside no more than an amputee’s ghost-limb, still aching though it was no longer there. He took a drag on the cigarette and exhaled, and some of the ash fell down on the book, and left a grey mark where Joe brushed it off.

  Joe took a last sip from his coffee. There was nothing left at the bottom but foam. The piped music had changed, jazz giving way to a soulful tune he recognised but didn’t know from where. He put out the cigarette. A small girl went past outside holding a teddy-bear. A teenaged student in pressed black trousers and a pressed white shirt went past carrying books. Two teenage girls went past eating ice-creams, and when the boy in the white shirt saw them he smiled, and the girls smiled back, and they went off together. The wordless song playing in the air niggled at Joe, that persistent sense of knowing without quite putting a name to things, which always annoyed him. He watched the skies above the buildings and saw that they were changing.

  It was a minute darkening, a momentary dimming of the light, and as he watched he saw a piece of paper on the ground outside move of its own accord, leap into the air and take off, like a dirty-white butterfly, and he knew the rains were coming.

  He paid, and stepped through the doors outside, and he could smell the change in the air. The old lady selling English primers in the shop opposite looked up too, and he could see on her face the same longing that he recognised, for just a moment, in himself. Then he strode down the car park, his boots crunching gravel as he walked, and he whistled a tune. It was only when he was almost outside his office that he realised it was an old Dooley Wilson song, from another smoky café, in another time and place.

  a scattering cloud of geckos

  ——

  As he walked along the wide, shady avenues of downtown Vientiane, Joe was struck again by the Japanese influence on the cityscape. Amongst the low-lying, traditional buildings along Lan Xang avenue, for instance, there emerged the half-completed shell of the new Kobayashi Bank building, a towering, glass and chrome egg visible from far in the distance, an alien entity in this sedate, regal environment. Against the wall of a shop whose outdoors stalls were heaped with pineapples and watermelons and lychees, above the head of the brown-skinned proprietor (a Hmong, Joe judged) who was sitting in the shade rolling a cigarette, there was a faded poster showing the Lao king and the Japanese emperor bowing to each other respectfully, below the words Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. You could see Japan in the cars, and in the blare of music that came through tinny speakers here and there, and in the notices for language schools that promised Number One Nippon, English Tuition, For Your and Your Children’s Future.

  He crossed Lan Xang and soon came within sight of That Dam, the black stupa rising against the sky like a reminder of long-gone wars. Once it had been coated in gold, and shone in the light, but the gold had been stripped, by Thai or Burmese invaders, no one was quite sure anymore, and never replaced. Grass grew through the cracks in the stone of the steps. It was a peaceful place; he had always liked it.

  He reached the dilapidated building on the corner. There was a spirit house outside, with miniature figurines standing in its courtyard, and offerings of rice whisky and food, and a burning incense stick. He paused by it for a moment, looking at it vaguely, then stepped into the hallway, which was cool and dusty and dark. He climbed up the steps, noticing the single light-bulb had burnt again. The building was quiet. There was a noodle soup place open to the street on the ground floor, but hardly anyone ever ate there. There was also a second-hand bookshop, but it wouldn’t be open for a while; not until Alfred, its proprietor, could shake off the previous night’s effects and convince himself to open up for business, which was unlikely to happen before noon.

  Joe opened the door to his office and stepped through, surveying the room as he did every time he entered. The windows, a little grimy, showed rooftops and wide open skies above the Mekong. His desk was plain wood, unvarnished, with a much-folded square piece of paper balancing one of its legs. On the table scattered papers, a paperweight in the shape of an elephant, a dull-coloured metal letter opener, a desk-lamp, and an ashtray made of a polished coconut shell. Ash and two cigarette stubs from the day before were still sitting in the ashtray, and he made a mental note to have a word with the cleaning-lady, though it never seemed to make a difference. There was no phone on the desk. In the top drawer was a Thai knockoff of a Smith & Wesson .38, illegal, and a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label, half-empty or half-full, depending.

  Also in the room were: a wastepaper basket, woven from bamboo, and like the ashtray unemptied; a metal filing cabinet, empty but for a pair of scuffed black shoes two sizes too small for Joe, which were the only effects left behind by the office’s previous occupant; a solitary bookshelf; on the wall, a small painting showing a burning field, the flowers crimson, the smoke coiling across the canvas in jagged lines of white and gre
y, the figure of a man blurred in the distance, his face hidden behind the smoke; three chairs, one behind the desk, two before it; in one corner, a potted plant that had long since passed away.

  It felt like home. As he stepped fully through, half-closing the door behind him, he startled a small gecko on the wall. As the gecko shot up other geckos appeared, and for a moment it seemed to Joe like an explosion, the geckos racing away from its source — which was him. He smiled, and went to his desk, and sat down, putting the paperback on his desk. He shared his office with no one but the geckos. Every time he came in it seemed to him that there were more of them. They would hide unseen in corners, and he would startle them each time with the opening of a drawer, with the legs of a chair dragging across the floor, and they would scuttle away. Once, he came across a solitary gecko squatting by the wastepaper basket. Its left front leg had been hurt, and it was motionless for so long that Joe had thought it dead. He wondered what happened to it — did it get in a fight with another of its kind? He never found out. Later, when he looked again, the gecko had moved: the last Joe saw of it the gecko was crawling slowly through the gap under the door, until finally the tip of its tail disappeared and the wounded gecko was through, passing beyond the safety of the office into the corridor beyond.

  Joe went around the desk and sat down. He thought of lighting a cigarette and decided against it. He turned the chair to the window and stared outside. The skies were clouding over, and he could smell the oncoming rain.